Chapter 34

We were transferred from the helicopter to a private jet in Jacksonville. We were about half an hour off the shore of Georgia before the jet changed course and headed toward the Northeast. The jet's controls had been compromised and the pilots were unable to change course. Someone wanted us to stay on this continent, someone even the Levarsi couldn't outmaneuver. My father approached me as we faced what appeared to be certain doom.

"It's true," my father finally said as fearful silence enveloped the plane. "Ailith, my daughter, never returned from that surgery. She was so young at the time, and the treatment was experimental at best. The surgeons told me she suffered an anoxic brain injury during the course of the stem cell transplant and she would never wake up. But she did wake up. It was a miracle, they said. But she never woke up the same."

"Thank you," I muttered even though that particular confession was the last one I wanted to hear. I wished he could take me into his arms and reassure me that I was crazy, that the Blight Rain was making me see things that weren't real. My father blinked back some tears and placed his hand on my shoulder.

"You're the only Ailith we've ever known. You are still my daughter, and always will be."

His words seemed to stab me to my very core. Yes, now I was his only daughter. It suddenly made sense to me why my parents always seemed to favor Grace over me. It was because Grace was their only child. My father knew there was something off about me after that surgery. Those KoRi cells went to my brain. They repaired the damage the oxygen deprivation had caused but when I woke up, I was thinking with those cells. They never took over my body, not entire the Blight Rain came. That was why, up until a few days ago, my KoRi celled heart always seemed to rebel against the rest of me.

There was nothing left to do except wait. Holly was sitting by herself at one of the passenger seats by the window. This jet was far less luxurious than the one which went down in the storm. It looked to be a cargo transporter that had been converted to a passenger jet at the last second. It was just as well, the bare steel walls and haphazard netting seemed fitting considering our plane had just been highjacked in midair.

I went to Holly. Her eyes were heavy and only the whites of her eyes could be seen. She reminded me of the little girl from the exorcist even though to everyone else she simply looked as though she was napping.

Yes, Holly was napping but the spirit inside her was very much awake.

"You caused the Blight Rain, didn't you?" I finally asked. "You did it to punish humanity for using the gifts I gave them. And then, after you turned the innocents into vampires, you went after the companies producing the Lumin pills. All for what? To hurt me?"

"No, I am so tired," Holly muttered as though she was talking in her sleep. Jaduerial couldn't control her as well as he had Iain. He was still getting used to her body, to speaking through her lips. I saw a droplet of drool trickle down the side of Holly's full, pouty lips. I knew that Holly wasn't the type to drool but then again, Holly wasn't alone in that body anymore. "I was trapped in that hole for five thousand years. I want to destroy everything. To know silence when all life is gone." Then as she said those final words, Holly curled up against the back of her seat, tucked her hands into the sleeves of her blue sweater, and started to snore. She was gone, Jaduerial was gone, I would have no more answers.

I sat back and closed my eyes. Even though I saw glimpses of my past lives when that car crashed into the lake, I wasn't those other women. I was still Ailith Ying, and I was afraid. Why was Jaduerial in Holly's body? What will he do to her when he regained his strength? Was the only solution to kill her?

I changed over at Holly's sleeping form. Could I really just throw a pillow over her and suffocate her before this plane landed? Wouldn't Jaduerial simply enter someone else? My father? Dr. Lemeris? How many would I have to kill to rid the world of that evil spirit?

Jaduerial had waited five thousand years to awaken from that pit in Manna City. What can a small twenty-year-old college student do, even if I had the memories of a goddess and all her many lifetimes?

As the seconds ticked by, no answers came to me. I stared down at my trembling hands and wondered what can I do in the time that I had left inside this body. Why was I born at this time in history? Into this life? Into this body? As consciousness ticked on by, we were all sparks of self-awareness with finite seconds and then nothingness once again.

"Buckle up," one of the Levarsi guards told me. "We are starting to descend. It looks like we're landing right outside Manna City. God help us all."

*

After the jet landed, an armed van approached us with a small army. They herded us with our hands in the air into the vehicle. I knew I should have kept my eyes to the ground before one of those hijackers put a bullet in my brain. But, like always, I was curious and I caught a glimpse of a name that I heard from Joseph's lips a day earlier. Rykirov. He was the one that was coordinating this kidnapping attempt. No matter where we went, it seemed as though we couldn't escape Joseph's friends.

"Ailith, sit with me," my father ordered as I entered the armored vehicle. I shook my head and sat by the door, away from him and Holly. I strained my eyes trying to see out of the small rear window that let in only the barest sliver of moonlight. Where was Livet? Didn't he tell me he served me in another life? Where were we being taken?

The answer soon came to us about an hour later. The van drove off the road and onto a graveled path. We were either being taken to a secret holding area or we were being taken to a deserted place to be disposed of. I didn't know which it would be, and once again I was reminded of my own helplessness.

How was I supposed to battle a malevolent god when I couldn't even get away from a band of earthly captors with unmarked vans?

As soon as Rykirov's soldiers opened the door to our van, I noticed the fierce, bone-tingling, wind that seemed to approach from all directions. Rykirov reached in and offered me his hand.

"Come, Ailith," he said and removed his helmet. I saw that he was an old man, balding, with a wrinkled neck. He didn't look very threatening but his men pointed their guns at the rest of the Levarsi members. "You and Holly, come with us."

"She's my daughter, I'll be damned if I let you take her!" My father exclaimed. He jumped out of the van before Rykirov could respond. One of the men pointed a gun to my father's head but when I gasped, Rykirov waved his hand for the man to step down.

"There's a man here to see you," Rykirov told me. What was that in his tone? Gentleness? Politeness? Would he kill me with a smile on his face? No, he didn't want to kill me.

A sickening thought appeared in my mind. No, I wasn't here to die. I was here to meet someone, someone whose importance to me I couldn't remember.

Rykirov opened his hand and gestured to the pathway leading down a ledge, toward a hole in the ground. Holly was awake now. She ran past my father and caught my hand in hers.

"Are you sure about this?" Holly asked. "We can try to run when they're not looking."

"No, they'll shoot us before we get five feet away. Let's just listen to Mr. Rykirov."

Holly and I walked along the rough, uneven path into the wind. I was reminded of the Mid-Autumn Festival. Although there was still just a sliver of daylight, the moon had already appeared in the sky. It hung there, in the blood-red sky like a lantern on fire. The black stones of the gorge cracked under my feet as I walked. I was filled with an intense feeling of deja vu, I had been here before, and not just in my dreams.

When the van and the soldiers disappeared from view, I finally saw that we weren't alone. A middle-aged man was there to meet us. He had short blond hair interspersed with strands of grey. He walked with a cane and he had a crescent-shaped scar on his left cheek. He didn't look to be much of a threat but the Levarsi crowded around me as though they had just seen the devil himself.

"That's Wilheim Oslen," my father hissed.

"Who, Mr. Ying?" Holly asked, her eyes large as saucers. She glanced from me and my father as though we were keeping a secret from her. It became obvious to me that she didn't hear a word of what I was saying on the helicopter. How could she? It was Jadueriel that had been sitting beside me, inside her body back then. Now that he was sleeping, Holly was back. Good old Holly, with her wide curious eyes and sweet-as-egg tarts voice. My father couldn't help but to continue in a kindly tone, like he was asked to explain an algebra problem.

"He's the leader of Terciel," my father repeated as though convincing Holly to stay away would convince me as well. "His company profited off Black Waters infecting innocents for the past couple of decades. His company later became part of Sylvirua. To say he's a wicked, dangerous man is quite the understatement."

"He's the one who sent Jack, I mean Joseph to make sure I made it out of Windflower alive," I explained to Holly. "I don't think he's here to hurt us."

I let go of Holly's hand and I approached the middle-aged man who was standing alone not far from the edge of the hole in the ground. Wilheim Oslen was a fake name. I knew his real name but I couldn't bring myself to say it. Just the thought of it gave me goosebumps. The strange but imposing man in a suit glanced over at me as I approached his right side.

I caught sight of his aged eyes. They were both so foreign and yet so familiar to me. We had never met in this lifetime, but I knew those blueish-green eyes. They belonged to the little boy in my dreams, the one who was always running away from me into the sunlight — into danger. Iain's eyes were like his, and yet so very different. This man was once a boy who was someone of great importance to me. He was the one I drew the chrysanthemums for when I woke up from that surgery in my new body, in my new consciousness.

"What should I call you?" He asked me in a good-humored tone as I came within speaking distance. His voice was soft, as always, calculating. The boy I had known from my dreams had grown up into a man, one who was a good deal taller than me. "Ailith? Orienne? Which of your many names?"

"Call me what you did the last time we spoke," I answered without thinking.

"Mother?" His eyes softened, as much as they were capable of softening. He even followed that word with a light chuckle. Mother. That word sent a shiver down my spine. This wasn't a joyous reunion. He knew it as well. I was his mother, and yet at the same time — I wasn't. I was Ailith Ying now. His mother was dead.

"What are you doing here?" I replied, trying to keep my lips from quivering. Deep down, I thought I knew. In my last life he was my son. Back then, I believed back then that he was like me, born of the deepest currents that flowed in the midnight ocean. To him, I gave the greatest treasure of all. I gave him ownership of Tahil lake from which he would create the medicine to cure the Blight infection.

He was a sick boy, always had been. We were short on money. He took the waters of Tahil and created for himself a company. Terciel. It sold death to the people in the guise of curing them. The leaders of all the other companies could follow their bloodlines back to me in one of my past lives. To my loved ones, over the centuries, I both knowingly and unknowingly left bits and pieces of out worldly magic. Like the weak fallible humans that they were, they all abused that magic for profit. Jaduerial, once he escaped from this hole where he was imprisoned, went and killed them all. He did because they were all descendants of people who were important to me.

The leaders of all the other companies were dead. Jaduerial killed them all. Jaduerial saved the one that mattered to me the most for last, the only one who I knew in my past life who was still among the living.

"He's here," I told the man with the scar. I tilted my head at Holly. "He's not inside that boy, the one named Iain. He's inside her."

"I know," Oslen replied. I saw the wisdom in his eyes and the sadness. The years had not been kind to him but I sensed he understood more about our current predicament than I could possibly explain.

"You have to kill that thing. No matter what the cost."

Oslen leaned in and whispered in my ear. "You are safe. Your Holly will be too."

"How the hell can you guarantee that?"

"No, the question is what do you plan to do when this is all over?" Wilheim smiled at my outburst, the way a wise old man smiles at a silly young girl. I detected a touch of a patronizing tone as he spoke to me next. "You will do the right thing, Ailith. I know you will go back and heal all those who were turned infected by the storm. Leave the rest to me."

His words were meant to be soothing but there was something deep inside me that was insulted by his patronizing directions. Although he had white hairs on his head, I was by far the older one. I felt the full weight of my past lives explode to the surface.

"Bl . . .Oslen," I snapped. I saw the ice in his eyes briefly crack as I almost called out his name, his real name. I caught myself before I said it. It felt wrong to say it, like that named belonged to someone else's life. My last life. "Mr. Oslen, what are you planning?"

"Only what I should have done a long time ago. Let me do this, Ailith, I've lived a long life, much longer than I should have."

"Wait, just know this, I don't regret the gifts I gave you. Not even now, not ever. Not even after everything, everyone, I've lost, the world lost." I couldn't believe what I was saying even as I said them. Those words didn't sound like anything I would say.

"I know, mother," Oslen replied with a weak smile. He reached out with one hand and grabbed mine. His fingers were warm —human hands. I saw a wedding band on his ring finger. For a second I allowed Odelia's feelings to flow over me. She died when this man, her son, Oslen, was only a child. Her sickly boy had grown up into a man. She wished there was more time for us to talk. She wanted to know about this girl who he had married, about the children the two of them had together. I felt like I was more Odelia than Ailith for a second. As a creature of eternity, all I wanted at that moment was more time. Yet, there was no time left. "I know. You gave me a chance to live and I never understood what it cost until now. Let me give you something in return."

When Oslen drew his hand back, I felt something heavy between my clasped hands. It was cold and metallic. I knew what it was before I even glanced down to look. It was a gun. A powerful gun capable of killing vampires. Yet, I also knew, on this night it was no vampire that I needed to kill. Just an avenging spirit.

"You will have only one chance," Oslen whispered to me, his eyes staring unblinkingly into mine. "Don't hesitate."

Oslen walked over to Holly and seized her by the wrist. He dragged her over to the edge of the gorge. I saw her features twist with anger and then slowly mix with fear. Yes, even Jaduerial knew fear. He was awake now and he suddenly saw the downside of being inside the body of a twenty-year-old girl. Holly Xu's body was that of a beautiful, muscular, athlete but she was no match for the might of this particular older man's determination.

"Ailith!" Holly or rather, Jaduerial, yelled. "Save me."

"She won't save you," Oslen replied. "I know the woman you claim to love. She's my mother. She bore me. Who is Holly Xu? She's no one."

"Lies," Jaduerial snarled.

"I have the might of an empire behind me," Oslen said as he dangled Holly precariously off the side of the cliff. "I believe Orienne will find it in her heart to forgive me for killing some unknown girl to avenge my son."

Holly's face contorted one more time and then I saw the anger melt out of it. Holly started coughing as though she were trying desperately to throw up. Then, I realized, she was throwing up. Jaduerial was leaving her body.

He was entering Oslen's body. The spirit saw clearly at that moment that there was a better host for his diabolical plans. Oslen was right. From what the Levarsi had told me, Oslen had armies and billions under his command. Who could be a better body for a wicked spirit to inhabit?

You will have only one chance.

As Oslen turned to me, I level the gun at his chest. I shot to kill. He was both right and yet so wrong. I was once his mother and I knew what had to be done now, to save the world. Yet, I was also Ailith Ying, and I had seen the devastation greed had wrought. Now, it was time for me to make things right.

I shot Oslen in the chest. Once, twice, three times. He fell backward from the edge of the cliff. Maybe I had Odelia's memories, but it was Ailith's finger that pulled the trigger. I killed Oslen to save the world, to send Jaduerial back into that damned hole in the ground. Oslen's eyes met mine as he fell. I hoped he died quickly so that he wouldn't suffer in those watery depths. Yet, at the same time, I knew that we had to make sure Jaduerial's spirit fell into the deepest depths of that hole, that demon-filled gorge, never to return to the world of the living.

After Oslen disappeared into the night there was only silence.

Slowly, the rain started to fall again. Ordinary rain. It had come to wash our tears away.

Jaduerial had returned to his cursed hole. The Blight Rain went with him. Oslen was dead. I felt my memories of Odelia leave me as the world turned quiet around us. This was the last of the things Odelia would wish to remember, the last chrysanthemums my haunted memory would ever make me draw.

I found Holly by the edge of the cliff. She was visibly shaking with shock. I knelt down and wrapped my arms around her, buried my face into her sweater. The rain pelted down on both of us, but I didn't feel the cold. I had never been so grateful to be caught out in the rain. It was natural rain, pure rain, untainted by the hatred of a malicious spirit. I started to cry and then to laugh. My hair stuck to my face like sheets of seaweed. Holly wiped the sticky strands away and kissed my lips.

"Is it over?" Holly demanded with tears in her eyes as though she couldn't believe those words even as she uttered them. "Finally over?"

"Yes," I replied and let out the smallest of all chuckles. "The Blight Storm is gone. Now we can start to rebuild our world."