Dream Eater (m|m)

Chapter 12

"Alex?"

Damien is watching me intently, with the cautious look of someone approaching a skittish animal that might attack or flee at any moment.

"Are you alright?"

"He's wrong," I say, as firmly as I can. "He must be."

The mingled calls of countless birds sift and echo through the surrounding trees, filling our silence with their song.

"Tiago's never wrong," Damien says at last. "If he says you carry a part of Sakariel's soul, then it's true. Besides," he adds thoughtfully, "it makes sense."

"How?" I challenge, incredulous. "How does it possibly make sense?"

"The timing lines up. You were born around 1919, right? And Sakariel..." He glances away. "What you saw in the dream happened in 1912, Earth reckoning. It's not surprising it would take that long for a...a fragment of him to find a suitable home. Plus, if your soul was already a composite of human and Celestial, it would have been more easily damaged by the experience of your mortal death."

I shake my head. "Damien--it's impossible. I don't understand how these things work, but the chances..."

His voice turns harsh. "Fuck the chances!" He grips my arms below the shoulders and gives me a hard shake. "Listen to me. Chance has nothing to do with it. It's fate, and choice, damn it. For whatever reason, Sakariel's soul chose you!"

I feel sorry for him, but I have to make him understand. I shove him away and break free of his grasp.

"Look... You don't know anything about me. If you did, you'd understand that I'm the last guy a Celestial would want to join souls with. I'm nothing--worse than nothing. I'm not a good person."

"Why? By whose measure?" he challenges.

He asked for it.

"You know all the shit that's happened on Earth since I became a dream-eater? I was twenty years old when I died in 1939. It had been twenty years of hell--or so I thought--and all I wanted from death was an end. But instead I was given a new life, as a demon."

I can't look at him anymore, and turn away. A flock of brightly colored birds take flight and vanish again, like living gems hidden among the trees.

"You know what I did with that life? You think I stood up and fought in all the wars, or joined in all the struggles for freedom? Well I didn't. I slunk around in the shadows like a coward, selling myself in more ways than you know and clinging to the world's underbelly like a parasite. I'm...disgusting... I'm not your 'creature of light.' I'm not Sakariel. Please just let me go home and then forget about me. Please."

I don't know when I start to cry, but by the end of my little soliloquy I taste tears in the corners of my mouth and can barely see past the drops clinging to my lashes.

Scrubbing a hand across my eyes, I prepare myself to face his reaction, but when I turn to look, Damien's expression isn't what I expect.

It's worse.

I expect revulsion, but what I see is heartbreak.

He swallows hard and looks away, and his voice is hoarse when he speaks. "You're wrong," he says. "It's you who doesn't understand."

He walks off in the same direction as Tiago. After a moment, I follow him, confused and angry, but not quite stupid enough to get left behind in the middle of a Brazilian rainforest.

~xxx~

I follow Damien through the dense undergrowth to a village by the side of a river the color of mud. He speaks in Portuguese to a man who seems to be the village leader, and they come to some agreement.