Chapter 10 Revelation 12:1
Eva
He released me. The sudden motion was just as startling as the touch itself. I hurried back against the wall, holding my injured wrist, the torc still clenched in my other hand. He stood up smoothly in one fluid move, all that raw strength hidden in a seemingly relaxed stance.
He moved toward the cot and grabbed the first-aid kit. He didn't look back at me.
"You need to set that wrist," he said, his back to me. "Or it'll heal crooked. I can do it. Or you can do it yourself. It'll hurt like hell either way."
He tossed the kit onto the floor in front of me. It skidded across the concrete, stopping at my feet.
"I'll be back," he said, and the finality in his tone was more frightening than any threat. He walked out of the cell, leaving the door open.
I stared at the open doorway, at the dark tunnel beyond. Freedom. It was right there. All I had to do was stand up, walk out, and never look back.
My legs wouldn't move.
I looked down at my wrist. It was a mess of swelling and bruised skin. The pain was a dull, relentless throb, a constant reminder of what he was, of what he could do.
And then I looked at the torc. The silver was still warm, humming with a strange energy. The words on the inside were branded on my palm. My body, my blood, my womb...
With a groan of frustration and pain, I reached for the kit.
It wasn't the cleanest job I've ever done. Setting your own bone with one hand isn't exactly a skill they teach in pre-school. But the sickening crunch as the bone snapped back into place was a necessary evil. I splinted it with a couple of tongue depressors and a roll of medical tape, the whole process a blur of sweat and curses.
The clean shirt was a godsend. I peeled off my bloody, dusty tank top and pulled the shirt on. It was a plain black t-shirt, soft from a thousand washes. It smelled like him. Moonshine and pine.
It was then that I noticed the bundle on the cot wasn't just the shirt and first-aid kit.
There was a book.
A small, leather-bound book without a title on the cover. I picked it up, my fingers running over the worn leather. It was old. Very old. I opened it.
"Is this the fucking Bible?" I whispered.
It was a Bible. But not the kind I'd seen in snake-handling churches, with gilt edges and flowery language. This one was different. The pages were thick, the text set by hand, and the words in an archaic form I struggled to read.
I flipped through the pages, my eyes catching on passages marked with notes in the margins, the ink faded but still legible. The handwriting was the same as the one in my bathroom mirror.
Genesis 1:26 - And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...
The margin note: A liar's prologue. He wasn't alone. She was already there, watching from the dark places between the stars.
Exodus 22:18 - Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
The margin note: They called them priestesses. They burned them for holding the power he couldn't understand.
Revelation 12:1 - And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet...
The margin note: Evangeline. Before the name was corrupted. Before they stole her story and made it theirs. This is my truth.
I sank onto the cot, the book open in my lap. My mind was a maelstrom of contradictions. The relic thief in me was screaming that this was a trick, a psychological weapon designed to break me.
But the girl who’d grown up terrified of the moon, who’d woken to find bloody words on her mirror, who’d run from a wolf the size of a car… she was starting to believe. Or maybe she was trying to belong to a story bigger than the one she was given.
I read until my eyes burned, until the words on the page blurred into a litany of gods, goddesses, curses, and a love that lasted for millennia. My eyes closed, and I was adrift in a sea of half-remembered dreams and a hunger that was not my own.