The Seer's Lover (The Seven Archangels Series) (9 page)

She was a seer!

****

“After that ordeal with Bob, let me buy you lunch. Sound good?” Ron pointed across the road from Lucas’s hut to a place overgrown with palm trees. The charming outdoor restaurant could easily be missed if someone didn’t know about the place.

Red Christmas lights strung around palm trunks and a thin white post that said
Carmen’s
marked the entrance. She’d have never given the place a second thought on her own. Unless she inhaled. Then the mouthwatering aroma of wood-baked pizza, bread, garlic, and chilies would have tantalized her. “Actually, Ron, I am starving.”
And dying to meet Carmen.
They headed over.

“I’ll bet. Bob says you got slammed by a seven-foot wave. You’ve got the makings of a true surfer.” Ron clapped her on the shoulder.

She cringed when his hand hit one of her many bruises. “The guy that helped me—”

“Lucas?”

“He works here too?” she fished.

“Yup.” Ron walked under a small archway. He and Calise were ushered to an open table by one of the waitresses. “Thanks, Jody.”

Lucas sat at a table in the back talking seriously with a middle-aged woman. “Is that’s Lucas’s aunt?” Calise cocked her head in their direction.

“That’s right.” Ron waved. “Hola, Carmen!”

Carmen might not have been a spring chicken, but when she rose, she reminded Calise of a farmwife who could bail hay, make bread from scratch, and have energy left over to paint the barn. She made her way toward them, sturdy in her stride and stunning in her confidence. Her dark hair was tied neatly back in a low bun, and the kitchen apron looked as though she may have been filleting the fish herself.

She held her hands on her hips. “So, you must be the great surfer my nephew talked about.”

Calise stifled a laugh. “I highly doubt I’ll try my hand at surfing ever again. Had it not been for your nephew, I probably wouldn’t be alive.”

“I’ll be right back, ladies.” Ron excused himself.

Leaning in close, Carmen spoke in a hoarse voice. “Lucas says you might be
seeing
things around here, is that true?”

Calise cleared her throat and folded her hands in her lap.
Here goes nothing.
“Juan Torres sent me to find you. He’s dead. I think he was killed for exposing himself to something evil and I think Anna is a—could be a—demon.” She looked at her placemat and continued. “I’m sure you think I’m a lunatic, but—”

“Shh,” Carmen hushed her. “Keep your damn voice down and don’t talk to anyone else. Go back to your room, keep to yourself, and come back here after I’m closed.”

Thrilled, Calise couldn’t believe the woman’s words. She never said “crazy” or “nuts” or anything. “So you don’t think I’m—” Looking up, she saw Carmen walking briskly back to the kitchen. Carmen gave Lucas a quick nod. He looked in her direction briefly then made a hasty retreat behind the restaurant.

Ron reappeared and spread the napkin in his lap. “I think the fish tacos sound great. What are you getting?”

“I have no idea.”

****

Lucas saddled Gotzone and rushed to Cabo Blanco in utter confusion. If Calise was a seer, he wanted to know everything about her. But that would have to wait.

He hadn’t been to Cabo Blanco. Or had he? Somewhere a memory clicked in place. He’d been there with his parents as a kid. He dismounted, paid the entrance fee, and began the nearly five-kilometer hike to Playa Cabo Blanco.

Did his parents know Alejandro? And why would an angel protect them?

The Sueco trail passed small rivers and rose up to a steep point before dropping down to the beach. Lucas collapsed in the sand from exhaustion. When he opened his eyes and sat up, the angel, Alejandro, was coming out of the water toward him.

“Ah, Lucas. Good to see you again. It seems su tía has finally sent you to see me, no?”

He sighed.
Who is this guy?

“Don’t you remember me from when you were here with your father? Come, let’s walk.” Alejandro serene voice was hypnotizing.

Lucas sensed resistance was useless. He brushed himself off, took off his shirt, and followed, casting his mind back to any memory of this park.

“You met Gustaf here with your father,” Alejandro said. “Gustaf was an angel, as was his wife, Susann. They established this park in the ’60s. I have protected what is hidden in this location for a long time.”

Lucas remembered running back and forth in the surf. His dad had said, “This is a special place Lucas, a place where Gustaf will keep everything safe.” He stopped walking. “What’s hidden here?”

“There are artifacts, or ‘charms.’ Your family passed them down from generation to generation. More powerful even than that which you wear around your neck. Your father knew every accessible footpath and tree from growing up in Mal Pais. He and Gustaf hid most of your family’s belongings here—I protect them. No demon can enter this reserve while I am present. It is consecrated ground. I make sure its location remains as hidden from the demons as possible.”

A pod of humpback whales emerged in the distance. Aliens of the deep, Lucas imagined he could hear the song that each male sang the world over. Spouts of water blew in the air before the backs crested and disappeared. Something about their appearance calmed him.

“Why are you here protecting them and why hasn’t Carmen ever told me about this?”

Alejandro laid a hand on Lucas's shoulder. “Things are in motion now that cannot be stopped, and I need your help. Carmen and I know the demons who hunt what your family possesses are closing in on us, and there isn’t much time left. This location is no longer secure. They will come here to hunt you—a rare, undiluted seer, and no doubt sniff out my consecrated ground. Our best bet is to leave this place as a decoy, remove the artifacts, and relocate them somewhere else.”

He was back in the middle of his old life. For what? What good had it done his parents? What was the point? “What could I possibly do to help with any of this?”

“Your task will be the most important of all. Meet me at the park’s entrance tomorrow morning before sunrise.”

The angel retreated into the ocean and disappeared in the crashing surf.

****

With Lucas gone, Alejandro checked the perimeters of his consecrated land thinking, as always of his lost love—his perfect angelic other half. As humans had soul mates, angels had a paired essence. They had been separated for over two thousand years because of his honor and duty to the Father in keeping his promise to protect Lucas's family and their artifacts…

He clung to his last memory of her, wrapping her words around him like a cloak.

“Please do not leave me to protect the human.”
she said, in the angelic language.
“I cannot survive without you.”

“I will not refuse Father’s request. I am honored to be chosen. You and I have eternity, so what is a few thousand years? Nothing but a short separation.”

“Let me go with you! Every angel is allowed one earthly life. I will live mine now, while you too walk the earth,”
she said
.

“My service must be in solitude. And I fear for you if we cannot walk the earth together. Evil abounds and demons outnumber us. What if…?”

“You need not worry. I would never fall and risk losing you forever.”

Her words were too bold
. “Wait for me. This line of seers and their artifacts cannot exist forever. We are paired essences. Nothing can separate us.”
His essence shimmered leaving heaven’s plane of existence. Angels never questioned duty…even for love.

She wrapped her spirit around and within him one last time. He disappeared.

Chapter 6

Flight 2092 en route to San Jose, Costa Rica

Shane fidgeted in his seat next to Nara. Contemplating a fall from grace was not something an angel did every day. His hands trembled. He wiped his palms on his pants to dry them. The red-eye flight’s low lighting and dull humming engine numbed his senses like the drone of honeybees. His brain was mush. He tried to keep his eyes shut and mind functioning. The clinking of glasses, rattling of ice, and popping of sodas by the flight attendants proved a welcome distraction. Choosing between cola and lemon-lime soda was a hair bit easier than choosing between staying an angel and allowing himself to fall.

His on-again demon girlfriend, Nara received a summons from her parents to assist on a job in Costa Rica. With both of her parents being upper echelon demons, disobedience was not an option. Her mother, Ronwe, hunted and killed seers who threatened to expose demons. Her father, Abaddon, sought and destroyed the religious artifacts used to fight them. According to a tip, they’d find both in a small town in Costa Rica. Hours away from meeting her parents, Shane would have appreciated being privy to this wealth of information before he’d agreed to this ad hoc vacation with her. If he’d known his girlfriend was in training to take over the family business, he’d have run. But now, he faced a decision—namely fight, flee, or fall.

Nara’s parents would pick them up outside the airport in San Jose. Shane had precious little time to consider his choices before they landed. He couldn’t very well fight all three demons outside the airport. Physically, he’d let his body go to hell since Calise left. He’d tried to waste away physically so he could die and escape the pain wracking his mind and body without reprieve. Every movement, every action brought his mind back to Calise. His heart, like a rock in his chest, weighed him down with its heavy thuds sustaining his tortured life. Drugs numbed the pain but never erased it.

If he fled from Nara and her parents when he got off the plane, he had nowhere to go. Nara’s dark influence anesthetized his mind over the last few weeks, and he relished her ability to temporarily deaden his senses. Without her, the pain would intensify.

Nara offered her solution—to fall and become a transitor. Both fallen angels and risen demons carried the name, “transitor” and were considered wishy-washy scum by both angels and demons. Shane always thought them pathetic. Decide to be good, decide to brave the pit, but do something.

A gray aura surrounded a transitor’s body instead of the sunlit yellow of an angel or the coal black of a demon, so it was impossible to know if a transitor had risen or fallen. From what Shane knew, their eyes changed, too—into hollow circles of light, as if the sun, eclipsed by the moon, allowed its bright rim of light to shine out only around the edges.

The physical changes weren’t the half of it. Nara assured him that his slate would be wiped clean from the moment of transition, all past victories or defeats erased. Only an overwhelming act of selflessness could bring him back into God’s graces and make him an angel again. Likewise, a conscious act of pure evil would propel him into the pit with his fallen comrades. Not acting either way would be much worse. God would erase his essence—the angel equivalent of a human soul—after one year in this purgatory state, a fate far worse than death or eternal damnation—he would cease to exist.

Not exactly Shane’s lifelong ambition, but Nara offered him something he couldn’t refuse: a means to erase the pain and hit the reset key. When he rose again, his essence would be renewed without the throbbing pain now dampening his every thought and action. The idea tempted him. He’d surrendered his heart to a woman who rejected him even when he knew the rules. Angels weren’t allowed to mate with humans; they were to spread their love over all of humanity. With reckless abandon, he had broken the rules to have Calise, only to have her destroy him. Angelic love—whole, complete, absolute, and everlasting—when pinpointed on one fixed object, cannot die. Shane knew now, too late, his love for Calise would fester within him until it destroyed him.

Shane had vague flashes of home, or heaven. Angels were encouraged to be born to one earthly life. A way to connect with the humans Father loved so much. Shane was gung-ho to be born and improve humanity in a way he couldn’t from the confines of heaven. Angels could intersperse their pure goodness and selflessness in a world being overrun with evil—human and demonic alike.

Demons, on the other hand, lived life after life on earth. Anything to not be in the pit. They ran rampant over the earth. Babies born of these human/angel or human/demon unions were wildcards. Not hybrids, no “mixing,” but any child could be born human, angel, or demon to any combination of parents. And the earth continued to spin…

Nara promised if he transitioned and helped her family with this absurd “seer elimination and artifact recovery mission,” she’d transition upward herself, abandon her family, and stay with him. They could save each other.

His all-consuming pain made him believe her. After falling, Shane would have a whole year to get back in God’s good graces with an act of redemption. He could do it and with a clear head, he could continue doing Father’s work.

Maybe I’m delusional, but I don’t care. Desperate times…

Calise had torn his heart in two. Often, he had to remind himself to breathe when memories of her meandered into his mind. He couldn’t let her go. Falling from grace and leaving his love for Calise at the precipice gave Shane the first prick of emotional sustenance he’d had in years.

Nara offered him something he didn’t even know he could have, but with the carrot dangled, he dared not risk turning it down. He wanted to be numb permanently, not for the few moments at a time Nara provided.

Shane snapped back to reality. He needed to decide right away and weigh the cost of the despicable act Nara suggested he do. She wanted him to hand over an angel baby to her father for sale on the black market.

He couldn’t find the strength to make the right decision. The idea of starting again gave him blinders. One means to one end. He justified his actions: one innocent angel baby sold into slavery became a price he’d pay for his own sweet relief. He’d have to fall to rise.

He made his decision. “I’ll do it.”

Her eyes lit up, and she quickly unbuckled her seat belt. “Ok, let me see what we have to work with here.” She crawled over Shane and kissed his cheek. “You fall, I’ll rise. Without her cluttering your head, maybe we can be together.”