Exaltation
Authors: Jamie Magee
Exaltation
By
Jamie Magee
Copyright © 2013 Jamie Magee
All Rights Reserved
Cover Art by Emma Michaels
Edited Todd Barselow
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.
Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book. This purchase allows you one legal copy for your own personal reading enjoyment on your personal computer or device. You do not have the right to resell, distribute, print or transfer this book, in whole or in part, to anyone, in any format, via methods either currently known or yet to be invented, or upload this book to a file sharing program. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Where To Find Jamie Online:
http://authorjamiemagee.blogspot.com
Other Books by Jamie Magee
EDGE
(Paranormal Serial)
“Web of Hearts and Souls”
Insight
(Book 1)
Embody (Book 2)
Image (Book 3)
Vital (Book 4)
Vindicate (Book 5)
Enflame (Book 6)
Imperial
Blakeshire
See (Book 1)
Witness (Book 2)
Synergy (Book 3)
Redefined (Book 4)
Derive (Book 5)
Rivulet (Book 1)
Impulsion
–
Contemporary New Adult Love Story
Accept the things to which fate binds you and love the people with whom fate brings you together, and do so with all your heart. ~Marcus Aurelius
For all the almost lovers....
Raptly, Jamison BellaRose paced before the fireplace in his home on Royal Street, the location of his latest kingdom. He’d lived for ages, in more than one dimension, in more than one realm of power. He’d fought more wars than he could ever remember, and negotiated twice as many. Yet, this night would test him in more ways than any other.
A manic scream stopped him dead in his tracks. He rushed from the parlor but was blocked by Saige, a young woman he’d claimed as his sister long ago.
“It’s almost over,” Saige offered in a tone rich with ambivalence. She nodded for him to go into the parlor and sit before the dark-stoned fireplace but he refused. Instead, he paced more, anger marring his angelic features.
Jamison assumed before this night was over his death would come; it would come because for the first time in his near infinite life he would be mortal. At best he would only have fifty years left on this plane. And that was only if the spells Saige had put in place served their purpose.
The withering look in her gray eyes—eyes that would not meet his—gave him his doubts, and that just would not do.
“Vow to me,” he said evenly, barely controlling the emotions coursing through him.
Saige made no effort to meet his desperate gaze. She was adamantly pacing the narrow foyer. The flames from the fireplace were dancing across the sheen of the marble surface. Her heels were clicking back and forth with her pace, offering an eerie echo, almost like a countdown.
She was not certain how this night would end, but she knew that both of their lives would be forevermore changed before the coming dawn.
Saige could remember when her own daughter was born, ages before, the agony and bliss of that night. The pain was not what brought her anguish; it was the fact that she knew her daughter would be imprisoned within the first twenty years of life. Saige knew she would spend the remainder of her existence trying to free her daughter, all for the good of man.
Her daughter, Skylynn, along with this babe that would be born within the hour, were a part of the Rapture the Dominarum coven had been waiting on for ages. A quest that began in a dying world, and led them all to the safety of the vast plane they were in now.
The Rapture, the rise of kings and queens, would slay the corrupt Gods of emotion and birth new ones who would in turn deliver a balance to the universe at large. Things like Rapture took time, and sacrifice, ages of sacrifice. There were times, like that very night, when Saige was certain man did not deserve a ransom such as this—one which would test pure souls, pure hearts.
In whispered thoughts she repeated an American poet’s, Dylan Thomas...
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.”
Saige drew her brow together and thought,
Words of such perfection, mirroring our immortal fight…
Jamison stole her from her thoughts. “How many years do I have…or am I down to mere moments? Will I at least get to see the babe?” Jamison demanded in a quiet tone that was nearly washed away by Raine’s screams.
Raine was his enemy, but she was now also the mother of his child.
Long ago, Jamison left the life of an Escort, the dark, demonic, angels who wounded souls by feeding on emotions they invoked…the essence of their soul. He left because they were not meant to be dark and twisted, but a salvation, those who protected souls.
The transgressions of his species, the cold greed—lust for power—had darkened the universe at large…birthed unspeakable myths. Ones this plane he was within now would only dare to call fiction.
The moment he saw Raine, a royal in the line of Wrath, in his kingdom of the French Quarter, he was prepared to destroy her, just as he had destroyed every threat that broached his people.
He didn’t care that her particular line of Escorts had the favor of the Creator, that it was rumored her Sovereign was seeking to bring her line back to salvation. He’d sensed her—her intent was clear—she was
hunting
him.
Before he could strike, Raine wrapped her body around his, seduction saturating her gaze. Her powerful energy pulled him into a drunken haze of lust. Unfeeling, cold, lust.
She
was
hunting him, she admitted so afterward. Her charge, given to her by the Creator, or so she says, was to make him a father.
Jamison called out to the Creator, one he knew, who had given him his reprieve from his past life, but he never replied.
Leaving Jamison with Raine’s very vague explanation. “I am but a vessel at current. This is my punishment for my sins.”
The plotting began then. Jamison didn’t trust her. He thought she’d vanish with the child, use his child for malice—his seed, a part of him.
He’d composed spells over her to keep her in place; her breed of souls could vanish without warning—rise to planes he could not reach any longer.
Raine never even tried to get past them, which confused him all the more. All she did was lurk in his lair, humming as she caressed her growing belly.
Still not trusting her, Jamison assumed the only way he could stop her from vanishing with the child when it was born was to make Raine mortal—a death sentence. The spell, one that would dethrone a deity from their power would all but kill Jamison. It would strip him of his immortality at the very least.
Worth it.
No child of his would ever feel terror.
It infuriated him that he’d lived for ages alone, with only the coven he protected, no child of his flesh, no woman he claimed, only to become mortal the instant he
needed
to live forever.
Fate is a twisted bitch,
he thought as he tightened his fist and thought once again of the one woman who’d stolen his breath at first sight, the one he knew now he could never have—no, he’d let a demon goddess seduce him…and give him a child. An equal hell and heaven.
He felt powerless in that moment, which was a first.
Saige never answered Jamison’s question. She had no idea how much time he had, she wouldn’t swear to it at least. Saige was nearly sure he would walk away from this unscathed. She, however, would not. Neither would Raine.
Saige trusted her heart, the same heart that forecasted her dark future.
This night had been plotted for some time. It began with Raine invading Saige's dreams and asking for a sacrifice, one Saige agreed to once she realized this request linked to the Rapture she had been waiting on for so long—a Rapture which would eventually free her very own daughter.
Saige caught her reflection in the antique mirror, which hung in the narrow hallway.
Her image had been captured in immorality at the age twenty-five. Her hair was a vibrant blonde, her eyes still sparkled blue even though their base was gray, and her ivory skin easily made her look years younger.
This sacrifice, one she gave Raine when it was requested nearly a year before, would age her twenty-five years. Raine needed a body of that age to carry a child to term.
Saige wondered how much difference those years would make in her appearance. She had never given much consideration to her outward image before. Still, twenty-five years was a lot of time.
Saige envisioned her skin turning gray, her hair silver, deep lines forming around her eyes, drooping shoulders accompanied by an arched back. The mere idea should have made her tremble, but it didn’t. She would look like an old hag if that were what it took to bring her daughter back, to release her from her shadowed existence, an existence Saige had fought to protect her from but failed.
“You understand how important the child is,
brother
.” Saige emphasized her last word to point out how long she’d been at his side, how much they’d witnessed in this life. What they had been waiting on, preparing for.
Jamison's blue-gray eyes slowly rose to Saige as she went on pacing. “This coven has already sacrificed enough for this Rapture,” he spat, and he meant that. Saige’s twin sister, Reveca, had been through hell. So had Saige. Each original who’d come to this dimension with him had all paid some kind of price.
Saige closed her eyes slightly, feeling the pain of the past and knowing the future would not be any easier, it would be
worse.
“You’re a powerful soul, Jamison. Your seeds are everlasting,” Saige said in a whisper. She had been reading deeply into the prophecy her own father had written ages before. She knew how vital Jamison was to not only the Rapture, but also the coven as a whole. He was fierce, but he was also the peacemaker. He could see past the chaos. He was a fallen angel who still had the power of the great beyond within him—a power he would pass on easily to his children…his daughters.
“What have I allowed?” Jamison asked Saige, finally realizing he had reached the point of no return.
“A new beginning.”
“How sure are you?”
“As sure as dreams are.”
Another bellowing scream then a faint cry. Jamison charged through the bedroom door just in time to see Raine hold their child for the first time.
***
On a dark stretch of highway, somewhere in west Tennessee, Rydell King had just reached sixty-two miles per hour in less than eight seconds. He could feel the vibration of a hundred and eighty-five horses under the hood of the 1975 cherry red Firebird.
He’d rebuilt the fifteen year old car from the ground up and was
seriously
thinking of keeping it all for himself. He rarely gave his gourmet meals up, but this ride was just too sweet. His hands only left the respectable vibration of the steering wheel to turn up the song that was playing:
Freebird
by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
His one and only passenger and closest friend, Dagen, grinned as he rocked his head to the rhythm and he bellowed, “I can’t change!” This was all too true for the pair of them.
They had long since left their foundation, the home of their sovereign, Revelin, the King of Exaltation, and created their own faction of Escorts. The name they chose for themselves was Helco. Rydell adored how closely that one word resembled ‘hell no’ but nevertheless the word in some way meant ‘handle,’ meaning they were going to handle themselves from this point out. No more orders, no more taking without giving, no more bloodshed, well, not on purpose at least—without merit.
Rydell and those who followed him knew they could survive without bringing the ruthlessness his sire had demanded they invoke. Of course, he knew he was not sinless or noble in his own actions either. He still hurt people, but what soul does not harm life in order to survive? None. Circle of life. Fact.
Even if it weren’t for his Creator-given birthright, Rydell undoubtedly would still be the leader of the Helco faction. The raw energy that rippled off of him demanded authority. Not to mention he had a lethal smile accompanied by a carefree laugh that would put any of his victims at his mercy. Rydell could look like a boyish high school quarterback one second and the very next a powerful businessman shrouded in wealth.
He spent most of his time, along with his entire faction, around the twenty-something population. He would grow bored with one dimension and move on, but lately this one had held his attention.
Rydell adored the cars, the music, and the turbulence in the air. Those here were at a point in time where old ways would no longer suffice and new ideas had yet to be born. It was a world full of gamblers, at least in their own way. A world perfect for his kind, and massive enough his sovereign would only vaguely notice how well Rydell was feeding his followers, the ones he’d stolen from him.
There was something more about this place too, a drawing feeling Rydell had felt long before he arrived…one which ripped him each time he thought to leave.
A new kingdom perhaps…,
he’d thought once.
The line of Exaltation was one of seven different lines that ruled dark emotions. Their purpose, at one time, was angelic. They took what human souls could not bear in raw form. Then one day, when each Escort—those in lines of anger, fear, grief, trepidation, shock, and obsession, along with exaltation—experienced the rush of taking more than what they were meant to...all hell broke loose. Now they all invoked, made the human souls feel the emotion they needed to feed on. They went from angelic to demonic literally within one bated breath.
We feed on souls…how tragic can we be…death be welcomed,
he’d thought before he rose against his king, Revelin.
Exaltation was seen as the party emotion, and rightly so. Who would not want to feel that way constantly? The thing is, unless you feel it for a pure reason, a reason that furthers your soul’s purpose, it’s deadly. It gives rise to greed, separates souls that were meant to be made of one, and slaughters purity…light.
Revelin, Rydell’s sovereign, had taught each in his line the lust side of the emotion, taught them to tempt vices. Revelin never gave the souls their desire, only a taste—in some sick way he drove his victims to the point of insanity.
Rydell and his faction were striving to not only feed their constant hunger, but not to tempt souls into bleak darkness—not entirely at least. Material. All souls wanted material things for the most part, and this car was one of those.