The Dirt on Ninth Grave - Darynda Jones Page 0,119
it had been a powerful lesson for my father. He saw what I went through when I helped him with his cases. He saw what the memories of others could do to me.
He showed me the regret he often felt at having married a woman who could not love me, no matter how hard she tried. Despite everything, I grew up okay. I wasn’t a perfect kid by a long shot, but he loved me beyond measure.
And then he was gone. He was killed, and he saw the celestial part of me for the first time. My light mesmerized him. It beamed out of me as though I were made of glass to become a blinding beacon of hope.
He’d had no idea. He knew I had gifts, but this was different. This was world changing.
He also saw what Reyes was. The darkness. The danger. But by then he knew enough about me and my world to see Reyes as a protector. A warrior who would give his life for me. A husband.
And he saw Beep coming from a light year away.
Beep.
I stilled, put the flashbacks on pause.
Beep. I had a baby. Reyes and I had a little girl, and she was made of stardust and light and warmth. Because of me, because of my light, because of who I was and what I was made of, we had to send her away to live with some very good people. There were beings after her, and my light would lead them straight to her.
He showed me crumbling when they took her away. He’d been there when I cracked. When my powers reached nuclear meltdown levels and I exploded and vanished, only to end up here, in Sleepy Hollow. And now I knew why.
Earl James Walker. Kuur. He’d found the god glass and he knew how to use it. With the intention of sailing to the other side of the world and dropping the box into the ocean there, the monks’ ships sank off the coast of what would become New York.
They rowed ashore with the box, traveled as far inland as they could before exhaustion and disease overtook them, then spent the next month burying it as far underground as they could in a little spot off the Hudson River.
Dad vowed to do everything in his power to help us keep Beep safe, so – a cop to the core – he went undercover. He infiltrated Satan’s ranks and learned everything he could. And now he was relaying everything that he’d learned to me in astonishing Technicolor.
He’d been spying on the emissaries for Reyes, trying to locate all twelve. And he sacrificed himself, his mission, and any more time he could have with me to force me to snap out of it. To save myself and, in turn, my daughter. The one destined to destroy Satan. The tiny creature the emissaries called the Ravager.
But I called her Elwyn.
Elwyn Alexandra.
My heart swelled with all the emotion coursing through it. When they’d taken Elwyn away, it was simply too much to bear. After everything Reyes and I had been through, after every obstacle we’d overcome, that was the straw that broke me. The one that sent me here to this town with no memory.
When the replay stopped, I sat there in astonishment. I would never see him again. After everything he did for me, for us, he was just… gone.
James was staring at me, not sure what to think. Why that man had crossed. He nodded to his minions, and they reluctantly continued with their task, which was basically to hold my arm so James could get a drop of blood onto the pendant. It was that easy. One drop of blood. The unfortunate’s name spoken. And the soul would be transported to a dimension of eternal torment.
James studied me. Deciding his men had secured me, he lowered the pendant, and one of the minions sliced my finger. I wrenched my arm away and slapped James on the face, raking my nails across his cheek.
“Hold her!” he shouted over the winds, angry for the first time that evening.
They wrenched my arm and held it still as he pushed a drop of blood onto the glass. A bolt of lightning shot out of it, but I held steady.
His expression changed from wary to elated. He lifted the pendant to the sky and spoke my name.
“Elle-Ryn-Ahleethia.” Of course. My celestial name.