Seduction

Forty-three

Theo was the first one in the chamber. He had blood streaming down his face from a cut above his eyebrow. Ash followed, limping badly and holding his side. He was in serious pain. His nose was swollen and bleeding. Both brothers were filthy. Their clothes were ripped. Out of breath, hurting, they had exhausted each other.

“Are you all right?” Theo asked Jac.

“What’s wrong with her?” Ash shouted.

“Jac?” Theo called. And when she didn’t respond, said it again.

Owain knew that Jac wasn’t his name, but that it was the name of the body he was trapped in.

At the same time, Jac understood she was still reliving the life of the priest named Owain who had once lain here, in the innermost cave, his arms reaching out, his hands immersed in ashes, his fingers grasping bones.

Thoughts crashed into each other. Two consciousnesses struggled to make sense of the present and the past.

Theo and Ash stood watching.

Owain knew the brothers were in the future he’d dreamed of as he lay dying. The one carried Owain’s own soul. The other carried his son’s soul. And these two men were living out his and Brice’s karmic struggle. Still.

Jac tried to push off the waves of memory. Tried to find her voice. Her mind was still half in the priest’s body, half in her own. She was both Owain and herself simultaneously. She tried to form a word, any word.

“Brice,” she heard herself say.

Owain was looking at the stranger who contained his son’s soul. He could feel Brice’s aura. Sense his presence. He said his son’s name. “Brice.”

Theo was leaning over her. “You said that before too, Jac. Who is Brice?”

Jac wasn’t sure she was supposed to come back yet. Was there still more to learn? Should she remain with the priest who had starved himself to atone for his sin of doing what had been asked of him instead of what he knew was right?

“Jac, you have to listen to me. You need to come back.”

Yes, he was right. Theo was right.

The story she had to tell Theo and his brother about Owain and Brice and Gwenore would explain. The father and son were still working out their struggles lifetimes later. The father’s sense of failure was so overwhelming, it poisoned all his future lives. The son’s sense of betrayal, and the guilt of having his mother kill herself rather than live without him, informed every incarnation he’d inhabited.

Jac had to come back. If she didn’t, these two men, Theo and Ash, would stay enemies forever. It was in her power to change that.

She was trying so hard to break through, her whole body ached. Her head throbbed and her ears rang in pain. She couldn’t do it. Not yet.

There was still something she had to understand about what had happened to Owain.

In what was left of the fire, Owain’s fingers touched a bit of metal. He felt the outline of a star. Its edges were rough. They cut his skin. The pain sent shivers up and down his arms. It was the star that Owain had made for Brice, forging it in the fire and hanging it over his crib. The star that represented the blemish that his wife and son shared on their skin and that marked them as special. Gwenore must have sewn it into the crown she had made for their son, that she had stayed up all those nights weaving with sacred herbs and amulets.

With a great effort, Owain pulled it out of the fire. He looked down at it in his hand. At the blood. He wondered how it had made a perfect circle around his wrist.

Jac realized she was staring not at blood but at the red thread that Eva had wrapped around her wrist and said would protect her. She had entered into this past holding on to the thread. Now it was time to use it to return to the present. She took a deep breath. It was like climbing.

Another breath. The burning sensation was lessening.

Jac took another breath. She tried to speak, but nothing came out.

Theo took her hands. Held on to them tightly. Too tightly. Something was pressing into her skin.

She pulled back and opened her right hand. Inside was a piece of roughly cut metal in the shape of a star. Theo was staring down at it. So was Ash.

Theo reached out and touched it. “Like the birthmark on Naomi’s neck,” he whispered. “The same strange seven-sided star.”

Jac had to tell Theo and Ash about the woman in her vision. She’d had a seven-sided star birthmark too, on her chest.

“Naomi. Gwenore. Two thousand years apart. Both branded by the same star. Souls connected. Both of you connected to both of them. To each other.”

“What are you talking about?” Theo asked.

“The star. Owain had made it for his son when Gwenore was pregnant.”

“Who is Owain? Who is Gwenore?” asked Ash.

“The three of them loved each other,” Jac was trying to explain. But there was so much to tell them. Where to start? Tell them they had been a family. But Owain had been forced to obey his gods. He couldn’t defy them and put his whole village at risk. And so he did what they asked him to do. He sacrificed his son.

They were both waiting for her to continue. She wasn’t sure if they’d understood anything she’d said. She was so tired but she had to tell them. They needed to know, so they could heal. But then she heard the loud scream of a police siren.