Silver Dreamer

By Caron Rider

With the death of the Pope, Diana and her friends realize the enemy of the Light, Asmodeus, is at the Vatican, and they finally have a chance to catch him. But all does not go well and when Asmodeus flees, the chase is on.

From New York to Rome to San Francisco excitement continues for Diana and her friends. They are after the most dangerous demon on the planet – and Diana is falling in love with one of the oldest. Though the demon threat in New York is neutralized, at least temporarily, the Warriors once again find themselves surrounded by danger in this third installment of The Silver Series and the ageless struggle between the Dark and the Light continues. Will Diana survive the fight with Asmodeus to find happiness with Alex at last?

The Silver Series takes you on an adventure where demons and heroes from the past blend with history, action, and just a hint of romance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caron Rider
• Release date: Jun 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311280220

Caron Rider

My first writing adventure is the Silver Series. It is three books following the life and times of Diana, a reincarnated warrior who fights against demons trying to destroy the world and who manages to fall in love with one a few times. The first book in the series is Silver Knight, which is free to download from Smashwords as an epub. To get a mobi or pdf version of Silver Knight for free go to my website: http://www.caronrider.comInitially I started teaching computer software, hardware, and networking in the 1990s. After some years that morphed into tutoring high school dropouts for the GED. I found working with at-risk teenagers so rewarding that I changed my undergraduate major to Education. Upon graduating from the University of South Alabama with a B.S., I began teaching high school history. History doesn't have to be boring and I tend to tuck fun and interesting information into my stories. I now live in rural Missouri with my two kids, two dogs, two cats, and several chickens.

Book preview

Preface

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

–Aristotle

The concept of yin and yang describes how seemingly opposite, or contrary, forces are actually interconnected—interdependent in the natural world—and how they give rise to each other as they relate to one another. Physical indications of this concept one can easily perceive: high and low, hot and cold, male and female, life and death. Emotional manifestations are present but not so readily understood, for instance, joy and sorrow, love and hate. It would seem that these are opposing forces but are in reality complementary and act to form a whole greater than either when separate.

In other words, how would we know the Light without the Dark?

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Present Day

It was odd to think that just six months ago, I knew nothing about reincarnation or that demons were real—that I'm a demon hunter. It seemed I had dreamed about demons for my whole life—though it had only been since I was ten, so eight years of dreams—almost half my life. Nightmares in which I died horribly, sometimes quickly but sometimes brutally tortured. Those experiences had actually happened, and I'd found out the truth of being reborn, being a Warrior for the Light, and begun demon hunting again just a short time before my 18th birthday. I still break out in a sweat thinking about the catacombs in Rome. Fortunately, we all made it out alive and got back home safely.

With the beginning of my senior year of high school, demons appeared and began murdering the citizens in my hometown of Springfield. As far as the authorities were concerned, they thought a serial killer had come to town. They were right. Alexander, my sometimes killer and sometimes demon lover, appeared as well. He followed me from my brief time in Rome when, much to my surprise, he saved me from a horde of demons in the catacombs. He wants me to live in this life because he's missed me, been lonely, and wants to spend time with me once again.

So Alex determined that my friends and I would move to New York in an effort to hide us and protect us from the demons in Springfield—especially a particularly nasty one named Beelzebul, who destroyed kings thousands of years ago. Masquerading as our vice principal, Mr. Beele, he went up in smoke just a few short weeks ago after receiving a couple of silver bullets to the chest. Born during the winter solstice, the longest, darkest night of the year, demons can only be sent back to the Dark with silver. Its unique anti-bacterial properties appear to release the molecular bonds holding the creatures together, and they explode into a  cloud of noxious black smoke.

Besides Alex, another demon I have found I don't want to kill is Bathsheba. She spent many years as a fortune teller, and I met her several times in the past. The most recent being in the 1930s when she practiced as Madam Rosa in a little apothecary shop in New York. During that time, I'd been having dreams about searching for a dark, mysterious man who, it turns out, was Alex. She told me he was not for me in that life. I would have to wait. She assured me that I would meet him years in the future in another life. She was right.

I didn't know it then, but Sheba had foreseen a disaster where demons took over the world. What she saw was an uncertain future. Nothing was ever written in stone until it had already happened. She foresaw that I would arrive in New York under an ominous and dark, stormy cloud wearing a seven-pointed silver crown and dripping in blood. She arrived in New York during the time of the American Revolution to wait until the signs were there for her to read. Now seven warriors have come together. Demons appear to be amassing both in Europe and in the U.S. Sheba has waited centuries for the time to fight. The time has finally arrived.

Seeing Sheba looking just as she had, not just decades ago but also centuries past, made me curious. She explained that demons could alter their appearance. Small alterations—wiping out a gray hair here or there, a wrinkle around the eyes, and age spots—were easily accomplished using minimal energy. Demons could also change from one form to another. To change form took enormous energy, so few demons did so, and then it could only happen once for many years. She found my relationship with Alex fascinating and suggested that over the centuries he had perhaps changed form.

Since being questioned by Sheba about my origins, I have dreamed of a stag and of a wolf several times. And I think I know why Alex and I always go back to Italy, although there are side trips to Greece, Britain, and a few other places. But Italy seems to be where we spent the most time. Time. It’s almost unfathomable to think of time and its effect upon my life, or rather lives—to think of its effect upon my soul.

If I understood my dreams, and Sheba is correct in thinking Alex was at one time a stag that ran with me, then he was also a wolf before finally morphing into a human. How many lives did I spend with him as a stag? Impossible to tell.

* * * *

2500 BCE

As a child in the woods outside my village consisting of round thatched huts, I met him when he ran on cloven hooves. I fell into the Tiber river to be washed away like so much flotsam. Choking and exhausted, nearly drowned, I finally scrambled to shore many miles from home deep within a dark forest. A haunted, desolate place, it had a deadly reputation and was to be avoided by travelers at all costs.

Wet and shivering with cold on the bank, I looked up and up into the gleaming red eyes of a stag. It was the largest animal I had ever seen, and when he lowered his head as if to gore me, I simply waited in misery for the inevitable end. Instead, he carefully hung his massive head over my shoulder so that my small arms could reach up to hug as much of his neck as possible.

He turned away, walked a few steps, and looked back as if to say ‘follow me.’ I did and never missed my home or my family while I lived deep in the forest with him. A strict guardian, he showed me things to eat and protected me from danger. He eventually led me to a hidden cache containing a bow and arrows. They gleamed silver in the light, and I practiced until I never missed a mark. I sometimes wondered where they had come from—who had been the original owner. When I became an adult, they fit as if made for me, and in my dreams, as in life, I ran through verdant, green woods carrying them, flitting from tree to tree behind an enormous stag…my stag.

We were not always alone though some lives were lived exclusively with him and no others. But some I knew contained different people. People I lived with…parents, brothers, sisters, friends. Especially my two friends. We ran through the forest together, my friends and I and the stag. My friends were lovers. Sometimes having children and sometimes not.

During the lives I remembered in my dreams, I thought to take a lover only once. He was a large handsome soldier with a merry twinkle in his eye. We allowed him into our lives in the secluded forest and became friends. Often I found him staring at me with a warm glint in his eyes. It made me nervous and excited at the same time. Then came the day when he leaned down to kiss me for the first time.

With no warning the stag attacked. He crushed the man beneath his hooves until just a bloody mass remained. The shock I felt left me staggered. I cried for days, not just for the loss of the man, but also for the realization that the stag would probably kill any man who approached me.

Many years after meeting my stag beside the river, a day arrived when we came upon two wolves. Mournful howls had led us to the scene. A female lay dead while her mate sat pressed up against her, guarding her even in death. When we appeared, he began pacing between his fallen love and us.

The stag snorted and stamped a hoof in warning. I had no desire to kill the wretched creature and started to back away. But the wolf had a different end in mind and attacked with lightning speed. The stag leaped to meet the charge, angling his body between me and the danger. The wolf avoided the antlers and landed on the stag’s back biting viciously at his spine.

The stag reared up and, with the extra weight of the wolf, fell over backward landing on top and crushing the wolf. The wolf wasn’t dead, though, and he scrambled to his feet growling ferociously. The stag struggled upright bringing his antlers to bear on the wolf and quickly goring him. With a flick of his head, he flung the wolf sideways into a tree. I heard the snapping of bones at the impact.

Still the wolf lived. He dragged himself to the side of his mate, laid his head upon her back, and closed his eyes to welcome death. Blood ran freely down the stag’s side from open wounds along his neck and spine. He reeled drunkenly before collapsing though still watched the wolf. Slowly I approached him and sat to examine his wounds. They were terrible, and I feared death would soon claim him. How could I go on without him? My life’s companion?

The stag continued to look at the wolf and his mate then gazed up at me—back at the wolf and then at me. His body started to shiver, and he made a startling high-pitched keening noise. I jerked away from him as his body began to undulate and swell. Black smoke swirled from the tips of his antlers and his hooves, eventually coalescing around him to hide him from my view. With a gasping pop noise, the smoke disappeared as if sucked inward into the new form of an enormous black wolf lying on the forest floor in place of the stag.

With a shake of his head, he sat up and looked at me expectantly with those same blood red eyes. Slowly I approached and reached out to stroke the massive body.  He stood to butt his head against me, urging me to leave the clearing, to leave the two wolves, life mates forever together, even in death.

When my stag transformed into a wolf, I finally understood what he was trying to tell me. Wolves mate for life…possibly for eternity.

* * * *

The Present

I couldn't say that my dreams had increased during the past few months, but they certainly seemed to have shifted focus. Normally, I witnessed my death at the hands of a demon, including Alex—usually a very gruesome death. After meeting Alex in Rome last summer, he begged me to remember the Titanic. And I did with the very next dream I had. After that, I began to dream of being married to Alex in previous lives. Some lives I appeared happy. But even so, it still seemed as if I died young.

Were we meant to be together forever? How long did I spend with the stag? How many lives did I run with the wolf? It was difficult to tell one life from the next. We were almost always deep in a forest.

Alex thought it was many thousands of years ago when he had changed form to become a man. But it was only two and a half thousand that he left behind the animal form. I know because I saw it in a dream of a life during the time of the founding of Rome.

 * * * *

780 BCE

The darkened forest stretched out behind me gradually sloping down to a valley miles away. Upon the precipice of a high and craggy cliff not far from the Mediterranean, I stood next to the temple of Apollo. Cool air blew through the green, wet leaves of olive trees behind me. As I looked across the countryside, the sun barely topped the horizon leaving the land below in shadow even with the coming dawn light.

Foggy breath joined mine to spiral into the sky. A warm, furred body leaned against my side, and I scratched behind ears that were on a level with my chest. He was a giant wolf demon, black as night with rust red eyes, who had been my companion in one form or another for almost as long as I could remember, let alone dream.

As I stood next to Apollo’s temple, the sun finally reached the valley floor, and I could see movement along the track that gently wound its way through the trees. A figure, slightly hunched as if carrying a great weight, paused by the Tiber river which sparkled in the early morning sunlight. I saw that it was a woman as she put down her burden and threw back her cloak hood.

She turned quickly, as if she heard a sound, looking back toward the deeper woods on the valley floor from the direction she had come. She moved the basket to a place under a bush along the river and then quickly ran further down the roadway.  However, she was not to escape. Renegade soldiers, by the look of them, caught up with her and attacked. I was too far away to stop what happened, but as I saw the men and their intent, I was already moving. I might not be able to save the woman, but she would be avenged.

My bow thrummed its song of death as each arrow found its mark, swiftly killing each of the soldiers. Occupied with the woman, they barely recognized that they faced another danger. Afterward, I knelt by the woman, taking hold of her hand to give what comfort I could.

She looked up at me through her pain and begged, Please, help my little ones—my little Romulus and Remus. At my nod, her eyes glazed over, and I gently placed her limp hand upon the ground.

Little ones? I went in the direction of the stream where I had watched her place her burden. I found a large basket containing two small boys who looked like twins, though not identical, with one being dark and the other light in coloring. Centuries later legend said that a she-wolf suckled the boys, but in reality, they ran with me and my wolf, although we would sometimes leave them with a shepherd and his wife. The boys enjoyed being in the care of the couple, and as they grew older, spent more and more time in their tiny home.

Before the founding of Rome in Italy there were two other brothers, King Numitor of Alba Longa and his younger brother Amulius. Amulius usurped the throne, and Numitor fled. Amulius murdered Numitor's sons and forced Numitor's daughter, Rhea Silvia, to become a vestal virgin—a priestess of the goddess Vesta, who guarded her virginity in the goddess' honor on pain of death. Some say Mars, the god of war, became enchanted by her beauty and had his way with Rhea Silvia during a total eclipse of the sun. As a result, she bore twin sons, Romulus and Remus, and had to flee.

When Romulus and Remus were grown, we told them of their uncle's betrayal and their origins. True to their heroic status of being the sons of Mars, they raised an army and marched on Alba Longa. Amulius was killed in battle, and Numitor was restored to his throne.

 The twins decided to found a new city close to where their mother had been slain on the banks of the Tiber. They disputed on which hill their city should be built, with Romulus favoring the Palatine and Remus choosing the Aventine. The decision was left to the will of the gods. Remus saw six birds on his hill whereas Romulus saw twelve on his. So they decided that Romulus’ choice was the right one, and he and his followers took to building their city on Palatine Hill.

 Using a plow drawn by a white bull and white cow, Romulus took to marking the city's boundary. However, Remus leaped over the furrow, either in jest or derision it's not now known. This ill omen suggested the city’s defenses could easily be overcome. They quarreled, and Romulus killed his brother just as the sun darkened in another eclipse. Thus, Rome began with a fratricide, a story that was later taken to represent the city's history of political strife and bloodshed. The legend sounds much more exciting than telling that Remus tripped when crossing the furrow of the city's boundary, struck his head upon a stone, and died.

* * * *

The Present

I often wondered how Sheba and Alex thought about their lives. Did they consider how their actions had affected human history? Sheba had been an oracle to kings and Alex had founded an empire. How do you go from that to being an ordinary woman or a simple soldier? Alex said that over time, he would forget things so he began writing journals. I had even read some of them. Perhaps they simply take one day at a time. For me, it's one dream at a time.

* * * *

732 BCE

My impassioned plea rang through my head. Please, please let me go. I want human companionship. I want to have children. Yes, yes, I know I raised Romulus and Remus, but that was in another life. I'm lonely in this life. Now. The wolf sat staring at me with his red eyes gleaming in the sunlight. I knelt before that large shaggy head and put my arms around his neck, stroking a hand down his side. Leaving had been such a difficult decision.

I have heard the rumors. The people had begun to associate me with the goddess of the hunt, Diana, along with the other maiden goddesses Minerva and Vesta, who swore never to marry. Diana who revered the moon and childbirth. Associating only with wild animals, having the power to talk to and control them. Known to be the virgin goddess of childbirth and women. Living only within the woodland and running through the sacred oak groves with her companions, Magdalena, a water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife, and Samson, a mighty woodland god. They at least occasionally married and had children.

I don’t know how much you actually understand. I love you. I do. I don’t know if I can live without you. It seems you have been there with me forever. But as warm as your fur-lined back is to lie against during a cold night, I want a pair of strong arms to hold me. I am jealous of Magdalena and Samson. I yearn for what they share. Can you understand that?

I stood and took a few steps backward before turning to leave. It didn’t matter. The wolf ranged behind me staying near. No! Go back! I pointed toward the clearing we had just left. The wolf sat on his haunches. I took another step and he stayed put. As I disappeared into the forest, a mournful howl sounded raising the hair on the