Seal Two Read online

  Seal Two

  Chosen Angel Series

  Sara Shanning

  CHOSEN ANGEL SERIES SEAL TWO

  Copyright 2019 by Sara Shanning

  Sarashanning.com

  Cover by coversbychristian

  Edited by Katy Light

  EditsbyKaty.com

  All Rights Reserved. No parts of this book may be used without written permission from the author. No parts may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without written permission by the author.

  This book is fiction. Biblical reference was used to fuel the imagination. ISV may be quoted or referenced. Any resemblance to person, place or event was used fictitiously.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chosen Angel Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  To my sons, whose greatest choice in life will be to choose the God that created them and live for His glory. You are loved beyond measure.

  To each and every reader who supported, encouraged, or cheered me on during the publication and release process of Seal One… thank you for your kindness!

  To Breathe for your inspiration and welcome, two years running now. No event is a simple event in life. It is all part of a bigger picture that only God knows.

  To believing in purpose. All of us struggle. Not all win. For those lost and fumbling, there is always hope.

  Chosen Angel Series

  SEAL TWO

  ASHAR

  “When the lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Go!” A second horse went out. It was fiery red, and its rider was given permission to take peace away from the earth and to make people slaughter one another.” Rev 6:1-2 ISV

  Chapter One

  The sun was shining, a brilliant sheen of promise that glimmered off the black metal of his car as Ashar stowed everything he could call his own in the trunk. It wasn’t much. A couple of bags of clothing, some personal items, and bedding.

  He slammed the trunk shut, the sound a final clunk to commemorate an ending, and a beginning. Ashar paused, one hand on the warm metal, staring at the house that had never been a home, examining his feelings. Should he be feeling more, he wondered? Fear, loss, anxiety?

  He didn’t. Ashar felt nothing but anger. He clenched his jaw and breathed in slowly, taking several deep breaths as he stared at the deceptive clean white lines of the house that had sheltered him for his entire life. Ashar pivoted sharply, turning his back on all that the house represented: a caged life of lies and false pretenses.

  He sat behind the wheel of his car, the seat warm from the sun, the world waiting for him to decide what it had to offer. Tightening his hands around the steering wheel, he took a moment to allow himself to change his mind, to find a reason to stay.

  Cars drove by, a jogger passed. The lady of a neighboring house stepped out onto her porch. He watched her peruse everything around her with disapproval, her dissatisfied faded eyes clashing with his through the windshield, piercing straight to his intent, reminding him of his reasons for needing to leave. His knuckles turned white as he stared back, his eyes narrowing to slits.

  Ash turned the key, listened to the rumble, the catch, the spark ignited by the familiar rush of self-loathing the neighbor, and others like her, inevitably made him feel. He, the freak child, she whispered to her like-minded companions. Ashar swallowed hard remembering her incessant questioning of his parents about whether they had found a ‘cure’ yet. How many times had she voiced her brutal opinions of his fate to his parents while he hovered in the background feeling exactly like the labels she had pasted on his heart?

  He signaled into traffic, his jaw tight, chin rising in defiance as he drove past her with eyes straight ahead. No more.

  Ashar refused to allow anyone to make his choices for him now that he knew the truth. He couldn’t. He shoved down the surge of pain that tried to take hold as he remembered his parents’ pats on his shoulder. He had thought it sympathy as they explained the latest bout of dead ends or the next round of tests. He had been wrong.

  They hadn’t hurt for their child. Their only son. No, they had seen him instead as a source of pride, with a twisted satisfaction that he was an anomaly. His differences had given them gratification without good intentions. They had allowed them to soak in the attention like a greedy plant in the rain.

  The hurt of learning the truth was sharp, too recent to keep buried. Home recently from yet another round of blood draws, x-rays, and tests, from another room with endless questions and strange faces staring at him, he had been tired as he always was, and had sought solace in his room, surrounded by his own things.

  Lying awake, he had suffered a bout of despair at the thought that his life would never change, so he had climbed out of his bed and sought out his parents to tell them that he didn’t want to do it anymore, and instead, had discovered the truth.

  His mother and father had been sitting together at the kitchen table, discussing how to disperse the check that lay like a neon flag between them. He had learned that it was payment for the privilege of the chance to explain his uniqueness. He had listened from the hallway, horrified, sure that he had misunderstood.

  The pain had struck deep. Bitterness had wet Ashar’s eyes. The following confrontation had ended with both of his parents looking at him not as their child, but as though he was a strange creature to be analyzed. Something to be examined, and the results recorded. His behavior to them had been simply another piece of the puzzle they were attempting to complete.

  He had needed to understand. He had asked every question he could think of to gain some sort of legitimate reason for why. In the end, he had retreated, ripped to pieces, numb, left alone to stare out his window at the broken illusion of his life.

  Today, he was taking back control. Today, he was driving away without an explanation and without their knowledge. Searching for his purpose. Not theirs for him, but one that he could claim for himself. It was time for him to decide who he was and what his life would be.

  Some day, he hoped he could come up with answers that would explain it all. Make the years of testing, experiments and pain worthwhile.

  Now, driving away from everything he knew, he grasped tight to the promise of a new life that he could live that was not held back by looming appointments that kept him home or secured in a bed. He was eighteen, just barely an adult in the world’s eyes, but his age didn’t matter.

  He no longer wanted the life he had been living. The one that apparently had been determined for him the night the four thick bones had pushed up beneath the skin on his back, and his screams had brought his parents to his door.

  Ashar rolled his shoulders just thinking about it. His fingers found the hem of his jacket and began to roll the fabric. That night had been the first of many trips to see various doctors to explain the growth of bones that did not belong. One night of physical pain had led to years of so much more than he could process. />
  He could look back now and see that his parents’ obsession with his anomaly had probably taken root that night and had eventually allowed him to become nothing more than a rat in a cage. Ashar could remember just trying to breathe, clutching at his back, writhing to relieve the gripping pain.

  He had not noticed then that there had been no fear or concern on his parents’ faces. Instead there had been a curious fascination that he had recalled only when he had seen it again as they’d seemed to mentally document his reaction to the reason for the check. Like a slide projector, clicks of scenes had surfaced. Instance after instance of zealous attention to x-rays, research findings and test results.

  What had it gotten them? Money, apparently. A sense of power. Attention. Ashar wasn’t really sure, since they hadn’t fully explained their viewpoints.

  The young Ashar had thought they were trying to help him, had believed their worry that the floating bones were dangerous and could kill him. That the bones could shift and pierce one of his organs, as he had been told. So he had learned to sit quietly as nurses and doctors examined him, and had endured the pain of the procedures they had deemed necessary. He’d spent hours alone in ‘recovery.’

  For what? None of the medical personnel had ever made any helpful determinations, as far as he knew.

  Allowing your child to be an experiment for money was abuse. All along they had been getting paid for samples of his blood, for the never-ending tests and experiments. They had told him that. His father was a scientist, and Ashar felt that role had played a part in his status being delegated from child to lab rat, but attaching an explanation to it did not help to lessen the pain.

  The memories played through his mind as Ashar drove away. Ashar recalled examining the strange bones the morning he had awakened in the hospital. In the privacy of the bathroom, he had traced the ridges with his fingers, measuring their skin-covered one-inch height, thinking about how he could possibly hide the four six-inch width spans. The top two bones had started between his shoulder blades and slashed down and inward to just beneath his rib cage, the bottom two mirroring the top two, except in the opposite direction. None of the bones touched another. He’d been marked with an X of bone.

  They had been fascinating then. He had known they would somehow make his life more difficult, known his peers would ridicule him. That initial reaction had proved true.

  As he’d run his fingers over the taut smooth skin that covered them, a thought had taken root. He had imagined wings, seen in his mind a giant spreading mass of feathers lifting him up above the world.

  He had dreamed of four wings holding him aloft for moments when sleep had claimed him, after the pain had settled into a dull numbness that night.

  Ashar had believed that those images in his dreams would become truth. He had begun to wait and continued to wait for the wings.

  He’d never told any of the medical personnel that he’d come to the conclusion that the bones would be wings. Nor his parents. Perhaps it had been a self-preservation he had subconsciously known was needed. He hadn’t even been able to say it out loud to himself.

  To everyone else, they hadn’t belonged, they had grown for no plausible reason, and he had become nothing more than research. The doctors had gone on to label them floating bones and done biopsies and scrapings, peered over countless x-rays and cat scans. Concluded nothing.

  To him, Ashar had never let go of the thought that they would become wings. Just because he hadn’t sprouted feathers yet didn’t mean he was wrong.

  Someday, with no logical reason to back it up, he believed that the bones that had caused him so much grief would become exactly what they were meant to be. Powerful wings. And not two like depictions of most things that had wings, but the four he had seen in his mind. Wings with feathers glistening, fluttering, and soft as fur.

  While his parents had huddled at his side and doctors had bent over his screaming, delirious form, he’d hovered at the brink of a world that held possibilities only movies presented.

  Uniqueness.

  Power.

  The supernatural.

  A purpose had been born inside of him that night. He’d listened to the mumbles of hypothetical jargon over the next few days while his mind clarified his future reality.

  Wings.

  Someday his back would flow with feathers and he would lift his four wings to fly.

  He still had no more proof that it would be true, but he was grounded in the belief. Someday, he would have his answer. Today, he didn’t want to care.

  His only plan now was to head west, away from Washington DC and all its research facilities, to make a new path. Maybe Kentucky or Arkansas. Or further south. The ocean could be nice. Seafood, beaches, lots of sun.

  Somewhere outdoors. He felt free outside, unconfined. Away from stark white walls. Out of the glare of probing lights.

  Maybe he wouldn’t even stay in the States. Ashar contemplated Ireland, thinking of pictures he had seen of acres and acres of green land. He’d read a lot of books during his containment and found escape in reading about different places around the world. He imagined going to Ireland would make it pretty difficult for anyone to find him. He really didn’t know for sure.

  If his parents even wanted to find him. Ashar shifted in his seat, rolling his shoulders back, gripping the wheel. He blew a long slow breath out, and glanced at the folded piece of white paper that sat on his passenger seat before jerking his eyes back to the road.

  No, he couldn’t allow them to find him. Whoever had sent the letter had told him what they intended for him next, and he could not let that happen.

  For today, his only plan was to keep on driving until he ran out of money or gas, whichever came first. To find a job somewhere. Disappear. Live. Keep his bones a secret. To never be called a freak again.

  Chapter Two

  Traffic was heavier, and the buildings were more commercial than residential now. The sun glinted off the car windshield. Realizing he was pulling at his jacket, Ash put his hand back on the wheel. He wanted to feel excited. His future was stretching out in front of him, the choices he could make as scattered as the different directions he could turn.

  Seeing a sign directing him toward the highway, Ash followed it. He slid his hand into his pocket, running his thumb over the soft leather of the pocket bible he carried with him always.

  He had found it at school on a particularly bad day. He had been bullied, failed a test, and his favorite teacher had announced he was moving away. Curious about the little book, he had opened it during reading time in English, which really meant the teacher had forgotten to prepare a lesson again. He had spent the entire hour immersed in the words, fascinated by the stories of a man named Jesus.

  He had read more before bed that night, knowing that the man called the Son of God was real and not a fictitious figure. His soul had clamored to know more, to understand the words and what they were trying to tell him.

  The bones had come that night, and the book had become his companion. He had spent hours and hours reading it while he lay in hospital beds, traveled in cars, and sat on planes on his way to see specialists who came no closer to an answer than anyone else.

  Stroking the cover now, he drew strength from its familiar feel. He was not alone. Many times he had felt that way since he’d become an experiment, even if he hadn’t realized that’s what he was. Lost in a room alone waiting for his parents or someone else to save him from the threat of death they had told him loomed, with only God to keep him company and listen to his thoughts and feelings.

  Irritated that he was still dwelling on his past, Ashar turned his attention to the roads, the scenery, following the signs to the highway. He gripped the wheel again, pressing his thumb and index finger together around the plastic circle, breathing out as calm slipped through him.

  He signaled for I-79, setting the cruise control when the pavement stretched out long and promising before him. Pressing into the seat, he felt the push of his bones a
gainst the cushioned back. A reminder of his purpose. To find freedom.

  He would drive until his gas tank chose the direction for him, he decided.

  Thankfully, his parents had let him get a job, allowing him to work in between the sporadic spurts of visits to doctors. Ashar had saved every penny, having no reason to spend it. The wad of cash he’d emptied from the bank after he’d received the letter was tucked away in different places in the car and in his clothing, both on his body and packed.

  Those funds were all he had to fall back on. Entertaining thoughts of leaving the United States was a pipe dream; he knew it would take more money than he had. Traveling by car would eat up a lot of his savings. Gas was expensive, and he had to eat. The spring temps were warm so Ash knew he could save by living out of his car for awhile, but eventually he knew he would have to get a job, find some place to settle.

  For now, freedom was all he sought, and he didn’t want to worry about how far his cash would get him. He wanted to explore the world around him with no schedule, no appointment, no agenda.

  A sign for Elkview, West Virginia was the first after the gas light lit up and Ashar took the exit and sought out a gas station.

  It was small and didn’t offer much. Ashar ate at a pizza place and then found a corner in a parking lot of a business that was closed. His night was uncomfortable. He was used to the sounds of the city and the silence of Elkview was as hard to adjust to as the bumpy backseat of his car.