Mistress of Redemption (29 page)

why… I can almost feel it getting

ready to start up again. If I can’t… If

something like feeling Eden can’t

make me good for longer than five

minutes, then what…”

“Nathan.” Her touch stilled his

sudden desperation.

“You always call me that when

you’re going to be kind…or your

most cruel.”

She nodded, acknowledging it.

“Jonathan will never get there

because Jonathan is not you. He’s not

your soul. Nathan can, because he
is

your soul. Nathan is braver than

Jonathan and knows what he has to

do. This is a place for the soul to

clean off the disguises we’ve placed

upon it. It’s not pretty, it’s not easy.

Jonathan is so firmly adhered, you’ve

made him into your skin. To become

Nathan alone, you’re going to have to

skin yourself alive.”

“What I’ve done…” Eliza’s blue

tear-filled eyes were in his mind,

torturing him even without the

presence of the mirrors. Quiet

despair took him. Resignation. “She

killed herself. Killed herself because

of me, three months after I left. I got

drunk when I heard, tied one on for a

week. Cursed her. Even snuck back

into town and pissed on her

tombstone, screamed at her.”

Passed out on the grave and woke

up with his face stained with a

night’s worth of tears and
the taste
of vomit in his throat.

“I know.”

“Forgiveness isn’t possible, is it?”

There was a weight on his heart as he

said the words, a weight he was sure

would keep him pinned down

forever.

“No, it isn’t. Not initially.” Her

fingers touched his jaw. Somehow

she had the strength he lacked, though

he felt as if his head was heavier than

the world’s sorrows.

She lifted it, made him meet her gaze.

“Redemption is. Payment for your

crimes, acceptance of that burden.”

He saw in her eyes that she had

walked that path as well.

“When it’s true,” she said quietly,

“when the debts have been accepted

into your heart and paid, then there is

forgiveness.”

“From God?” His lip curled up, half

derisive, but he knew it was a mask

for hope.

“Yes, from all that is God. From your

own soul, which is the part of God

that dwells within you. You come

home to yourself and to the Great

Lord and Lady, whatever name you

choose to give Them. You discover

what drives the redemption, the

justice, the forgiveness. The

Constant.”

“What’s that?”

“Love. Faith. They are one, for

they’re inseparable.”

He swallowed, managed a scoff that

came off like a sob. “I don’t have

that, do I?”

“I love you. I believe in you.”

“Because we’re soul mates.”

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Joey W. Hill

“Yes and no.” She cocked her head.

“I don’t think the feeling that soul

mates have is a biological imperative

we have no control over. I think

we’re matched because we chose one

another, back when our souls were

new. No more than babies, because

babies understand everything.”

He swallowed. No one loved him.

No one ever had, and he’d done

nothing since the realization to make

himself more loveable. What could

he have done, anyway? He’d started

his life with a black mark over him.

There’s something wrong with this

one. Its
mother didn’t want it.
Why not throw such an infant on a refuse

heap, let it go back to dust unnamed,

rather than making him suffer through

a life branded with the tearing pain of

that knowledge? Perhaps that was the

true secret of the tree of good and

evil.

Adam’s and Eve’s eyes were

opened, and they knew then they

would suffer through pain. Their

children and children’s children

would be subjected to unspeakable

evil because their Father truly didn’t

give a shit. They’d simply been Play-

Doh toys to amuse Him.

He didn’t want the bitterness to

overtake him, rob him of this

moment. “Please…

Will you say what you just said…one

more time?”

She hesitated a moment, enough to

warn him that what she was about to

do wasn’t necessarily something

intended. When she leaned over, she

stopped just before she reached his

lips and looked into his eyes. “I love

you, Nathan. I always will.”

Then she kissed him. Not the brief

brush he’d stolen from her in the

beginning, but a full fusion of their

mouths, her lips coaxing open his to

tease him with her tongue, make him

feel her need as well as his own.

Everything went away. There were

no clothes, no piercings, no Hell,

nothing. It was like they were back in

the Garden again, only there were no

forms. Just the feel of it surrounding

them, the light of that sword a

protective cocoon holding all of it in.

No bindings kept his hands from her

and yet he found he could not move

until his Mistress gently closed her

hands on his wrists and brought them

to her waist. He touched her skin and

more than her skin. He felt her body

against his, but at the same time there

were no barriers at all, as if his soul

simply stepped into the light of hers.

The Dona his eyes had seen all the

time, the Goth Mistress of Hell with

her red lips and dark-rimmed eyes,

faded away. The disguise for her

soul.

He nearly cried out at the flood of

white light that poured into him,

surrounded him, held him. It was like

that poison ivy she had described, a

moment of overwhelming craving for

something before it melted into this.

Contentment, peace, desire sated

forever in nothing more than an

embrace, in one kiss. He could

almost feel the softness of her wings

enfold him, the purity of her so strong

he could no longer use vision to see

her. He simply closed his eyes and

kissed her back, kissed this beautiful

spirit who was kissing him. He held

her in his hands, held light as

substance.

When she broke away and stood back

from him, her eyes were wide,

almost

frightened. She was the Dona he

knew physically, but so different. His

soul knew her, knew things his

rational mind did not understand and

was already scrambling to hold,

frightened of losing a grasp on them.

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Mistress of Redemption

We may not have Eden. But we have

this.

It was as clear in his head as if she’d

spoken it. He saw it in her eyes.

“Dona, you…you’re an ang—”

You’re my soul mate.

He’d seen the movies where the

elevator cable gave way, plunging

the occupants into screaming terror.

Suddenly the Garden was gone, the

ground was gone and he dropped,

tumbling into darkness. Dona

dissipated before his eyes, her mouth

open on a cry, perhaps a scream, as

he fell…

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Joey W. Hill

Chapter Eleven

Cold stone. He was on cold, wet

stone. He got to his feet in complete

darkness, feeling off balance from the

lack of a visual anchor. Dona hadn’t

been in control of this.

He’d seen it in her eyes, the fear, the

guilt. She’d broken some type of rule.

At the thought, suddenly where he

was and what was about to happen to

him were irrelevant.

“Dona!” He shouted her name. At

first he only heard silence. Then he

wished for silence.

It was a moaning, like a lonesome

wind through a dark forest at night,

only there was no wind, no forest. A

tide of voices rising in a discordant

symphony of despair, the keening

punctuated by the occasional shriek

of agony. The sound people made

when fear overcame every rational

thought so all that was left was the

unstoppable need to scream.

“Dona!” He roared it, moving

forward, stumbling blindly. “She

didn’t do anything wrong. It was me,

my fault. Leave her alone. Dona,

dammit, where are you?”

He fell, caught himself with a hand,

felt rock stab his palm, but more

importantly, he noted his fingers

fluttered over nothing. He was on the

edge of something and it was from

that chasm the wailing was coming. It

was far away, but not so far that the

despair couldn’t blast him like the

heat of a furnace. Everything in him

told him to back away, to scramble

from that precipice. But Dona could

be there. Dona might need him.

Snarling, he charged forward before

he could lose his sense of direction.

Intending to leap into open space,

instead he yelped in surprise when he

came up short, rammed hard into a

surface like a brick wall that rapped

him smartly on the forehead. It made

him stagger back, his senses spinning.

“She’s not there. Granted, she

cheated there at the end, but since it

was a compulsion of her heart, it was

not a true deception. She wanted to

let you understand your true self,

even if for only a moment. I’m not

inclined to punish her for that. It was

an act of Fate. I suspect that my

Lady’s stubborn, meddling and yet

usually right Will was also somehow

involved. For you see, only your soul

mate can bring your soul to the

surface with a kiss.”

Nathan blinked to find his

surroundings had become

illuminated. He was on a cliff top, a

pillar of rock surrounded on all sides

by an open chasm. The light came

from a fire-like glow that emitted

from the chasm, as if they floated on

a sea of embers.

The voice came from a man squatting

on bare feet not more than ten feet

from him.

“Man” came to Nathan’s mind only

because of His form. While the man

rested on His knuckles in a familiar,

mundane pose, the energy pulsing

from Him was

overwhelming, such that Nathan

could do no more than obey the

compulsion of his trembling legs to

fall to his knees.

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Mistress of Redemption

It was the light he had felt inside

Dona, only this was the source, her

light like the gift of one of its rays.

The man had pale skin, almost a silk-

gray in the light. His long dark hair

fell snarled over broad shoulders, the

strands tangling in the upper curve of

the gray silver-white feathered wings

that were half spread, balancing Him,

as much a part of His body as a

bird’s.

When He rose, His height was equal

to Nathan’s, but Nathan knew the

stature of the Being before him had

no ceiling. His form was merely

convenient. He could not find the

strength to rise to his feet before

Him. There was no room for rational

thought and therefore no room for

deception. There was only emotion,

pure raw. All that seemed to matter

now was how badly he’d fucked up

everything and how much he missed

Dona.

Needed her, even though he didn’t

deserve even to have a memory of

her.

“We…belong together.” Saying the

words was a comfort. It was the only

response he had the strength to

manage.

“Since the beginning of time.”

Lucifer nodded, considering him.

Nathan felt the terrible power in that

look, underscored by the disturbing

keening still rising up from the

flames, more muted now. “But the

time has to be right. You’ve found

your soul again, with her help. But it

doesn’t absolve the crime. It does not

pay your karmic debt.

You haven’t been fully redeemed,

now have you?”

It flitted through him again, what he’d

felt in her arms, joined with her. The

shadows that represented the rage

and darkness of his soul. The guilt at

the things he’d done. The inability to

forgive.

“That’s not Dona’s failing, though

she’ll think it is. If I returned you to

Purgatory in a new body, you’re

likely to let the same fears guide your

actions. If you met her in mortal life,

you could destroy her as you have

destroyed others.”

But I need her now…

It was what his soul cried out, the

soul that had begged for his mother.

What’s behind the mirror?

No Dona now. Nothing but himself to

answer the question. So what was the

answer?

On his knees before what he knew

was the Power behind everything, it

was all as clear and simple as a

mirror, ironically. The final true

reflection was undeniable, like the