Page 67 of Revelations

Embarrassed at her own lack of initiative, Greylyn shrugged. “Guess I just gave up a long time ago. For years it bothered me, not remembering my human life. And then, one day, I just stopped caring. It’s not like it mattered anymore.”

Actually, it had hurt too damn much, the not knowing. Every town she’d visited, the thought had nagged at her—was this familiar? Was that person familiar?

After a century of nothing, she had released the pain, the needing to know; released it to the universe to transmute its hold on her soul. Only after doing so, had she been able to gain a semblance of relief in order to go on with her immortal life.

“But, Greylyn…it does matter. It matters a lot. I’m not just talking about the prophecy, either. Your past is your past. It’s part of who you are. Even if you don’t remember anything from that time, it still formed who you are now.” He cast his eyes down to the desk as if memorizing the keyboard where his fingertips still hovered.

He was right. She knew that. Now that she’d seen the image of the lake on the monitor, a mixture of emotions stirred inside: excitement at finally making even the slightest connection to her past; apprehension that there were answers out there for her; fear of what exactly those answers entailed. Just as she had faced down the hidden truth of her feelings for Kael, she would have to face down her fear of something greater—her own history.

Any elation that she might have felt at finding out who she was before withered in the knowledge that the truth would only serve Olivier’s evil purposes. With that realization, she slumped down in the vacant oversized leather office chair next to Thomas, cradling her head in her hands.

He shifted uncomfortably as Greylyn collected her thoughts.

She finally raised her head back up, her voice trembling at first. “Okay.” She struggled to clear the knot in her throat. “We know where to go, at least. That’s a start. Any bright ideas what to do when we get there?”

With a few clicks on the keyboard, he pulled up everything known about the area. Roughly 101 miles north from Dublin, the town of Enniskillen was situated on a short stretch of the River Erne between the two lakes—the bigger northern lake, Lower Lough or North Lough, and the smaller southern lake, called the Upper Lough or South Lough.

“We should stay a day or two in Dublin. The Trinity College Library should have lots of reference materials we can utilize.”

Greylyn grinned as she watched his face light up with excitement like a small boy on Christmas morning. Of course, he would want to spend time there. The library at Trinity College was probably on his bucket list. He might look like a rough and tough rugby player, but he loved books more than anything.

Glancing over the top of his head at the wall, she started laughing. There, above his multitude of diplomas and degrees, in a worn oak frame was a picture of the one and the same library with stacks of books for as far as the eye could see.

“Not sure that’s a good idea, Sparky. I might never get you out of there.”

His grin lit up the dim room. “True. True. We should probably book a return trip that includes a week or two in Dublin at the end of this excursion.”

A cold chill filled her chest at his off-hand comment. What if there was not a return trip?

She left him alone with his computer to make the arrangements. Feeling tension setting in her shoulders and the base of her neck, Greylyn chose to walk down to the creek behind Thomas’s cabin to relax.

The night was clear, with all the constellations easy to see before the forest enclosed around her near the water’s edge, leaving her in darkness. The creek barely trickled in some spots; definitely not deep enough to fish in. An owl softly hooted in the distance, as the nocturnal life native to the area began their nightly rituals.

Greylyn perched on an overturned bucket on the shoreline and contemplated the events of the last few months. Purposefully blocking out all aspects related to Kael, she focused on her interactions with the two archangels—one fallen, the other not. Both knew far more about this prophecy than they’d let on. They were not sharing.

What does my past, my family, have to do with the seed from the Tree of Knowledge?

Pulling out her dagger from the sheath at the base of her spine, she turned it over in her hands. It felt smooth, almost icy to the touch. Although a deadly weapon, she felt connected to it as if it were a friend. This weapon had annihilated countless monsters. It had caused its fair share of blood and death. Still, its sheer presence comforted her. Now knowing that the symbol on the hilt was no random decoration, but her own family’s crest…it confounded her.

Had the guardian angel, the one that held it before passing it on to Jasper, stolen it from her family? Had he been the one to kill them?

No, that wouldn’t make any sense. Guardian angels didn’t go around killing people.

It could not be mere coincidence that this particular weapon had ended up in her hands.

A sharp crack of a twig breaking in the distance startled her out of her churning thoughts. Greylyn jumped up, knocking over the bucket, and held the dagger out in front of her. Peering across to the far side of the creek, two metallic silver eyes glowed back at her. Close to the ground, the eyes locked on her, unblinking.

A low growl confirmed her suspicion--wolf. Not just a typical wolf, especially since wolves were not indigenous to the area. It was not another creature like the ones that she had encountered in Baltimore, either, for it was fully transformed into a wolf, on four legs just like what one would see in the wild. This was no werewolf.

A shifter—Greylyn didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. Some species could transform into just about anything, including human forms. Some ancient species specialized in what they turned into and how. There were bear shifters, tiger shifters, and wolf shifters, which was what she suspected this one was.

However, there had been that one time in the mountains of Japan when she’d actually came across a dragon shifter. Now that had scared her. If this one was a run-of-the-mill wolf shifter… it shouldn’t be much of a problem.

As the beast crept forward to the water’s edge, Greylyn kept her eyes trained on it for any sudden movements, while trusting her peripheral senses to catch signs of others. Wolves, even shifter wolves, preferred to hunt in packs.

“Hey there, buddy. You lost or something?”

Its forehead visibly creased, and it bared its fangs at her, as if offended at being talked to like a puppy.

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