The Sword of Michael - eARC by Marcus Wynne Read Free Book Online Page A

and green and silver tumbling in the water, a temple collapsing around a huge red crystal shaped like a prism; a wave of Dark energy riding the wave, overcoming the heroic few holding space for the Light, holding the Darkness back…
    The War.
    The Sons of Light against The Sons of Darkness. The followers of the Law of One against the followers of Belial.
    …and now I returned…
    “Marius?” Dillon said. “Marius?”
    I stood at the lip of an open grave.
    “Did I just walk over that?” I said.
    “Nice,” Dillon said. “You okay? What you got?”
    I looked up at the night sky. Clear. A thousand stars gleaming above the city lights. An endless eternity of night. Somewhere out there, beyond space as we mere mortals called it, something pressed against the fabric of our reality and slouched towards us, ready to rend its way out of its dark womb.
    “Long story, bro,” I said.
    “Have a smoke long, or get the hell out of here and go have coffee long?”
    “Coffee long.”
    “Then let’s do like the cowboys and Indians and get the hell out of Dodge.”
    “Something I need to do.…”
    I pulled a half-full Advil bottle out of my pocket and rattled it. Dillon opened his mouth, then closed it. I chanted the opening words of a Lakota power song gifted to me by First In Front as I closed my eyes and called in the Light to illuminate and clear this space of the lingering essence of evil that had been perpetrated here. I continued to rattle and felt the Light bring its brilliance into me, and felt the Darkness lifting from the roots of the grass and from the disturbed earth of the grave. When it was gone, I pulled out my tobacco pouch and offered a pinch to the spirits here, and closed with a simple prayer of, “Thank you, Creator God.”
    I took a deep breath. “Now we can go.”
    Dillon looked around, scanned the graveyard.
    “Dude,” he said. “Can’t you afford a real rattle?”
    * * *
    Gigi’s Coffee Shop on 36th is one of my fave coffee hangs in a town full of excellent coffee hangs. It’s open and airy with Ikea tables that are the right height to work at or lean on, the food is extraordinary and cheap, the coffee excellent, and the service is committed to creating an open, welcoming atmosphere. It feels like Home.
    Dillon and I sat at a back table, hunched over big mugs of the house French Roast. Outside people walked their dogs, bought newspapers, enjoyed the night air; cars flowed by.
    “The story?” Dillon prompted.
    “How’s your belief system tonight?”
    He actually considered that. “That changed forever the day you worked on me. I don’t waste time arguing with my own experience. You know, you told me something that day. You remember? You said, ‘Dillon, you might not believe in Spirit, but Spirit believes in you.’”
    He grinned and tilted his coffee mug at me. “So what I believe is kind of irrelevant.”
    “Your belief is never irrelevant, Dillon.”
    “There you go getting all shamanic on me, dude. What I’m trying to say in a fancy way is that whether I know it or believe it, if you’ve seen it, it’s good enough for me. Does that work?”
    Dillon’s trust is not given lightly. A man with his background didn’t live as long as he had by being naive or overly trusting.
    “Thank you, Dillon.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “This humble shaman guy thing wastes time, you know? I get it. Cut to the chase and tell me the story.”
    Dillon is grounded and solid and the man I trust to watch my back. But after all these years, I’m still cautious about opening up the door to the other realities to those who didn’t work with them everyday. A shaman’s job is to cross over into those realms and bring back information, rescue souls and soul fragments, carry the dead into the Light, do battle with Dark Forces when necessary, undo sorcery, deposes and extract. I did all those things. And a big part of the job was to journey and return with information and share it.
    So I needed to tell