Destiny's Revenge (Destiny Series - Book 2) (26 page)

“Samael, I’m not talking about Lauren with you, drop it.”

“You are mad. That was the most vigor my senses have felt in millennia. I think you should call in sick to work.”

“Damn it, Samael, enough!”

Lauren’s voice echoed through the closed door, “Did you say something, Max?”

Samael’s voice responded in my head, “O
nly that you are more perfect than Aphrodite
.”

I knew I needed to answer her, “No, just singing.”

“I know you’re in a hurry, but when will I see you again?”

I turned off the water and could feel Samael’s excitement. I took a deep breath and opened the door standing there in my towel. “Lauren, what I said this morning about my head being all jacked up, I meant it. Don’t get me wrong, this was a pretty spectacular surprise, but I really need to sort some things out before we pick back up where we left off.”

The look on Lauren’s face was hurt, but bad news never gets better with age. I needed to find a way to exorcise Samael from me before I started seeing Lauren again regularly. He wasn’t right about very much, but he was right about her having experienced more pain in the last three years than any person should experience in an entire lifetime. I didn’t want there to be a possibility of Samael doing anything to her again.

Samael had been very good the last couple days, but something about my encounter with Lauren had invigorated him. His thoughts were loud in my mind: D
on’t send her away on my account. You’re being overly protective for no reason. I cannot even take control of your pinky finger, what do you think I’m going to do to her?

Lauren nodded. I knew she didn’t understand and there was no way to tell her why we needed to keep our distance. She gave me a soft embrace and made her way silently for the door. I stood paralyzed in my bedroom, willing my body not to go after her. I heard her van driving away and finally allowed myself to breath. I finished getting ready for work and left the house with no time to spare.

I got to work to find Randy standing in the parking lot. I still had fifteen minutes before my shift, so I assumed he wasn’t waiting on me. I gave him a courtesy nod and a quick wave with little attention.

In an over-friendly tone he called, “Hey, Max, glad to see you. You’re a little early. Can we catch up real quick?”

I shrugged my shoulders, not opposed to speaking with him, but my encounter with Lauren was fresh on my mind, and Samael had given up interjecting, so it felt almost as though I had her to myself.

“So, we didn’t expect to see you back. I was so surprised yesterday when you walked through the door looking for your old job, I forgot my manners. How’ve you been?”

“Good, getting back into the swing of things. It’ll take me a few days to get back into my nocturnal routine.”

Randy chuckled, a little louder than was necessary. He seemed a little nervous. “Good, glad to hear you’re … adjusting. Say what do you think of your partner?”

“Dale’s okay. We didn’t talk much, but he seems to know what he’s doing.”

“Good, not many around from the old crew. Wanted to make sure someone as talented as you didn’t get stuck with someone you didn’t want to work with.” Randy was horrible at small talk. He must have something on his mind; he couldn’t really have called me over for this.

I looked at my watch now with fourteen minutes before my shift. Keeping this up with Randy would be the equivalent to piercing my eyelids – useless and painful. “Alright, well it was good talking to you, I’m going to head in and see about a quick turnover so maybe we can spring the off-going fellas a couple minutes early.”

I turned away and was two steps into my escape when Randy asked, “So, do you hear much from Lauren? You were quite an item for a while, right?”

That was odd? But I guess Lauren was a bit of a celebrity for a time. She stopped a robbery by stepping in front of a little kid just as the guy pulled the trigger. She saved that kid’s life that day and had been all over the news for it. Randy actually introduced himself to Lauren and me shortly after the incident. “I just saw her before I came to work. I’ll tell her you asked about her.”

I saw that he seemed pleased, and I turned back toward the door. When I reached for the handle, another paramedic opened it into me. I was startled but so was he. We introduced ourselves. He was one of the off-going guys, Robert. “It sure is great to meet you. Your timing is great by the way. Dale’s partner quit, and I was going to have to cover half of last night’s shift until you appeared out of nowhere.”

“Well then, I guess I picked the opportune time to go job hunting. If I’d have known, I might have held out for more money.”

Robert gave me a quick rundown of their calls for the day; looks like it had been pretty slow. They had spent most of their day moving patients from emergency rooms to other hospitals. Dale and I weren’t so lucky. Within thirty minutes we were racing up I-26 to a multi-car accident near North Charleston. Three ambulances were on the scene, and it was gory enough that I had a quick flashback to a roadside bomb that had exploded in Afghanistan. I quickly filed the images from Afghanistan away in the back of my mind and helped the people in front of me.

We stayed pretty engaged most of the night, and it wasn’t until nearly three a.m. that we had time for a bite to eat. Eating out of vending machines is never my favorite, but that time of night is too late for Taco Bell and too early for Dunkin’ Donuts.

Thoughts of Lauren consumed me now that I had idle time. I tried to think back to my conversation with Samael. He could put images in my head but he really couldn’t control any part of me. I didn’t think he could override my will. That’s the problem, I didn’t think he could…but I just didn’t know that he couldn’t. Dale and I were sitting silently in the ambulance. It was a little awkward, but not uncomfortable enough to break the silence. I found a piece of today’s, or I guess technically yesterday’s, newspaper on the floor. I picked it up and leafed through the Business section. Nothing particularly caught my attention, but it gave me a good reason not to start up a conversation with Dale. He reached into a book bag and pulled out a thick textbook and began to read.

After I had flipped through the newspaper twice, I put it back on the floor, “I’m going to check supplies in the back and restock.” Nothing worse than going to an accident and being out of some simple piece of first aid gear. Dale nodded but didn’t look up from his book.

I did a full inventory of all drawers and shelves and the two bags. I went into the office and pulled all the material to be fully stocked. I flipped through an end-of-shift check off sheet; it looks like we’re supposed to sign this off every day. This wasn’t something we had the last time I was a paramedic. I meticulously went through the entire sheet and did all the things I was supposed to do. It was six fifteen, less than an hour until our relief would show up. My mind began to wander, and it made its way to Lauren, again. Trying to snap myself out of it, I asked, “So Dale, are you taking some classes or something?”

“Yeah, nothing exciting though. My degree is in computer science. I can’t stand taking all these worthless classes.”

“What, like English?”

“I wish, at least I’d have some hope of passing that. No, I’m taking Eastern Religions, and I’ve read this one passage like ten times. I have no idea what I’ve even read.”

I had to endure the same thing when I was in college. I offered Dale a little advice, “Sometimes it helps to cement it if you talk through the subject. What was the main idea of what you read?”

“I don’t know, something about the Islamic demons called Jinns. I have no idea what value this could possibly have to a computer programmer. Like maybe we’re going to come across Ilbis when we’re coding or something?”

I could feel Samael listening; it was the strangest feeling. It was as if he were somehow heightening my listening or something. “What the heck is a Jinn?”

Dale answered, “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but it is some kind of low level demon that works for the head demon, Ilbis.”

Samael was quick to comment this time, “There is no such thing as a low level demon. There are only servants to Ilbis.”

The last thing I wanted to do was screw up and start talking to myself in front of Dale, so I thought hard, “Samael, keep your thoughts to yourself.”

I couldn’t offer Dale anything other than my sympathy because I really didn’t know how knowledge of demons would help someone be a better computer programmer. Heck, even with a demon living inside me, I wasn’t all that happy with the knowledge that it was even possible. I would much rather only have been reading about it as some abstract religious concept, instead of living it.

As Dale and I were headed inside, Randy was waiting in nearly the same spot I had seen him last night. I could feel that he wanted to talk again, and it was like he picked up right where he left off last night. “So, what’s Lauren doing these days?”

I tried to keep the frustration from shining through on my face. It was hard enough keeping her off my mind as it was; I didn’t need Randy asking about her, too. “Not too much. She’s been self-employed for a while.”

“Is she a consultant of some kind? Private security, maybe?” Randy was a great guy, really upbeat every time I’d ever talked to him, which in itself was a little strange. I hadn’t seen or heard from this guy in nearly three years, I had only talked to him a few times in my life, and not only did he remember me, he remembered my girlfriend, her name, and was interested in what she was doing. A part of me realized I was just being paranoid, then Samael’s voice quietly rang through me and said, “No, Max – you aren’t being paranoid. Evade his questions, give him nothing.”

It’s hard to roll your eyes at a voice in your head, but then I thought a little harder. I didn’t trust Samael, heck I didn’t even like him, his existence had caused nothing but pain for me even before I ever met him. But so far, his advice had been right on the money. Rather than answer Randy, I answered Samael in my mindversation, “Give him nothing? He’s just trying to be friendly. I’m the new guy again.”

Samael’s response was firm, “No, he’s asked nothing about you, and he is trying to worm his way close to you so that he can get near Lauren. Share nothing with him.”

My brief exchange with Samael had created too much of a delay in responding to Randy. My answer was almost strained when I finally said, “No, I’m not really sure how to describe what she does, but she seems to be happy. I’m going to go get ready for the turnover. I’ll see you later.”

As I took a stride to step away, Randy called out, “Hey, maybe you two would like to go to dinner this weekend?” His expression was hopeful, and he really looked like he was just trying to make a new friend.

Samael’s voice echoed again, “Tell him no.”

This time I opted not to carry on a conversation inside my head while I was interacting with another human, “I’ll check with Lauren. We might need to plan something a little further out.”

I did the pass off with the oncoming team, clocked out, and was in my truck headed home when Samael let loose, “Don’t trust him, Max. You are incredibly naïve and he may be dangerous. Don’t you find it odd that you met him while on a date with Lauren? He introduced himself to you both. In less than twenty-four hours from meeting you he convinced you that his lifelong dream was to be a paramedic? When you returned he happened to be in charge and offered you a job on the spot, no questions asked, didn’t even ask for a reference?”

“No, I don’t think it’s odd. It isn’t like I don’t have skills, Samael. This is what I do.”

“Max, no one gets hired the minute they walk through the door. What about hiring paperwork, salaries, benefits? None of those things even came up. He just told you to grab your uniform and show up.”

“Samael, again I worked here before. All my information is already on file. I could have come back any time. You’re blowing this way out of proportion.”

“No, you are turning a blind eye to someone who wants to exploit you. Worse yet, you could end up allowing him to get close to Lauren.”

“Can’t you leave? If I could get you out of my head, my whole life would be normal again. Maybe I need to find a priest or something. They can exorcise demons.”

I heard him laughing. It’s like Samael didn’t have the right responses. You would think if you were a demon taking up house in someone’s head and they threatened to find a priest, you’d try to talk them out of it, or get angry or something, but laughing?

The roaring laughter died out, “Max, you need me. I know this is an uncomfortable friendship for you, but I am your best shot at you keeping Lauren safe, and we both know it.”

“Samael, you and I both know you took up refuge in me in some feeble attempt to keep Lauren from killing you. You are not helping me keep Lauren safe. You are an uninvited guest.” I thought of Rewsna again; she would know how to send Samael on his way.

The flash of Rewsna in my thoughts was significantly more shocking to him than my threat of a priest. He said nothing, but I could feel his anger welling up. Oddly enough he waited until I pulled in my driveway to answer back.

“Listen Max, I know you are enamored with Rewsna. She is capable of many impressive skills. Her telepathy is second to none, and let me tell you, it has been no easy feat to block her constant attempts to communicate with you since I took up refuge. You keep looking at the world in visions of good and evil – this is some stereotype that is planted in people from the time they are children. You need to grow up and realize that it has less to do with good and evil and more to do with action and reaction. All souls make choices throughout their lives, some are good and some are evil – their fate with the universe has no bearing on those choices. Their choices permit them to be whole or to remain fragmented. I cannot put it any more clearly. Yes, I am an uninvited guest with you, but without me – the Council would have used Lauren to create an unbalance – changing people’s destinies at will. Lauren would have very likely extinguished me if we had another encounter – but believe it or not – that would have been a bad thing. I sought refuge in the only host that I knew Lauren would never allow to perish.”