Of Light And Shadows

Chapter Fourteen...

She could feel him searching her thoughts, sifting quickly through the last eight years of her life without paying much attention to it. She got the sense that he was trying not to pry. He wanted only to pull out the parts he needed and she appreciated that. His touch was incredibly gentle, but despite his careful searching it still felt uncomfortably intimate to have somebody inside her head. She took a deep, steadying breath, ignoring the building headache.

She felt it when he reached the edges of what she knew. It was like he hit a wall. His hand tightened fractionally on her arm, though not enough to cause any pain. In her mind she saw him standing there, gazing up at the barrier in disbelief. She didn't know how he could get past that wall. It seemed to stretch for miles inside her mind, too wide to go around, too tall to climb, too thick to break through.

"This can't be right," Lucifer said quietly. His voice was strained, almost like it was an effort for him to speak. "It looks like your memories have been blocked from you on purpose. I have to let go for now or I'm going to get a nose bleed." She opened her eyes as his hand released her forearm and saw that he had his other palm pressed against his forehead.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he answered after a moment. "I expected it to be difficult but not like this. Jia, somebody has taken your memories from you. You've been forced to forget." Her eyebrows rose. "I had to stop because I can't get past that wall in your mind myself. Now I've found it I can get back there without having to go through the rest of your memories, but I need your help to go further. I need you to imagine that wall falling apart. Focus your energy on tearing it down with me. It will hurt and the memories that come after may be equally painful both physically and emotionally, but if you're ready we can get through to them." Jia nodded. He smiled, took a deep breath and placed his hand over the symbol on her arm again. She copied him and closed her eyes.

This time when she felt the tap she welcomed it and she saw the wall in her mind immediately. It was still huge and it seemed so out of place in her head. She didn't like that it was there where it didn't belong. She wanted it gone.

She imagined a demolition hammer smashing chunks out of it. She imagined it falling apart around her, pushing up clouds of dust and rubble like a real brick and mortar wall. She felt Lucifer tearing at it and the first dull throbs of pain lanced through her skull, but she continued bashing away at this wall, this huge, formidable barrier hiding her entire life from her.

She wanted what was on the other side. She wanted it and whoever had hidden it from her would pay for keeping it away from her. She went at it harder, smashing it with that heavy hammer in her mind. It seemed unshakeable but eventually it started to crack.

She was in real pain now, sharp throbs of it burning behind her eyes as she battered at the barrier until finally, finally it fell. She heard Lucifer grunt softly as he continued through to the rest of her life, dragging it out of hiding for her to finally see it all. He tried to be as careful as he could but it was like the memories were people and they needed pulling forwards, kicking and screaming, so she could see them.

The pain was intense as she watched years of memories she'd never seen before flickering across her vision, hundreds and hundreds of sounds and images and sensations that she'd long forgotten.

Suddenly she knew why her mother was sickly. She knew why her father hated her. She knew why she was able to do things no Lotura should be capable of. She knew at last why she'd been left to wander the streets, and most importantly she knew why her memories had been inaccessible. It hadn't been an injury or another person trying to keep them from her. Nobody had built a barricade between her and her childhood like she'd thought.

In her shock and trauma her childhood-self had put up the wall on her own, unable to process the awful things she'd been through. Her father tried to kill her and in her fright she rejected everything she knew and ran with nothing but the clothes on her back, in the middle of the night, at just twelve years old. All at once Jia saw herself cold and shivering on the ground again, dressed in a thin night dress with bare feet and no hope.

It was too much. She was thrown sharply from the memories as the pain became so intense that it exploded in white lights across her vision, blotting out everything. She sat back against the cushions, teeth gritted and panting against the blinding light until it subsided enough for her to be able to see again.

When she was able to focus she saw Lucifer slumped into the corner of the sofa with a thin trickle of blood running from his nose and his arm crooked over his eyes. He was paler than ever and she could see his hand trembled gently as it rested by his head.

"Louie?" she said softly, afraid that he was unconscious.

"Ouch," he muttered. She sagged with relief, glad that he seemed to be well enough to respond to her. "That hurt." He sounded nauseous.

"Do you need to lie down?"

"I'm not a fan of the idea of moving." He gingerly wiped the blood from his face with a handkerchief he took from his pocket before putting his arm back over his eyes.

"You sound like you're going to be sick."

"It's possible that I am." He paused. "Keep talking, it's distracting me."

"Did you see what I saw?"

"Yes."

"I never imagined it would be so awful." Her voice cracked on the last word. "My poor mum. All this time I had no idea."

"I was surprised to see Lauviah was your mother."

"You know her?"

"I did, before I Fell. I thought she was dead." He struggled to sit up, squinting against the pain splitting his skull. His whole frame rocked unsteadily. "She wasn't one of the Angels set to be cast out. We assumed instead that she was a casualty of the Uprising. I had no idea it was so much worse."

Jia's mother had been kidnapped by a Demon and taken to the human world. That Demon had forced her over many years to give up her energy to fuel his eternal life and had used her as his own personal plaything. She'd been enslaved for so long that the time didn't even register properly to Jia. The Demon in question was Abaddon, and he was Jia's father.

"I'm a half-breed between a Demon and an Angel," she said softly. "How is that even possible?"

"It shouldn't be. Angels are forbidden to mate with Demons. What Abaddon has done to your mother is an atrocious thing." He swayed where he sat and Jia clenched and unclenched her fists.

"Let's talk about this later. You need to lie down." She stood slowly, feeling like a ship in a storm as dizziness threatened to topple her. After several deep breaths it subsided enough for her to help Lucifer to his feet. He was even more unsteady than she was so she let him lean against her, guiding him over to his bed.

The ground seemed to buck and lurch beneath them as they weaved across the room at a snail's pace. He sat on the mattress slowly, every move sending another wave of nausea through him. He laid down and tugged her with him, not letting go until she was settled on the soft bedding beside him.

"I can keep an eye on you if you're here with me," he answered when she raised an eyebrow at him. Even that small movement made her head throb. He snapped his fingers and the lamp went out at his command, plunging the room into shadows. "That's better," he sighed.

"I feel like somebody used my head as a football," Jia groaned. "I think I'm in shock too. After seeing all those awful things happen to me and my mother I should be hysterical. I should be screaming and crying and instead I'm just...numb."

"It'll come," Lucifer answered gently. "I'll be right here when it does." He sounded like he was barely conscious. "I'm going to pass out."

"Demons can pass out?" She got no response and realised he was already gone. She knew she wouldn't be far behind him with how woozy she felt. It was like there was a train whistle going off inside her skull. She had only a second to let out a rueful, bitter chuckle at the awful memories of a life she'd wanted so badly to know about, before she too fell into unconsciousness.

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