Destiny's Revenge (Destiny Series - Book 2) Straight, Nancy (book club reads .TXT) 📖

Omega. There is a Cabinet whose roles are Doubt, Loathing, Deception, Anger, Jealousy, Fraud, Waste, Infidelity, Temptation, and Darkness. The Council – to which Renny and I belong, contend with our opposites on the Cabinet. Although we know that the others exist, we don’t spend a great deal of time getting to know them. It’s uncomfortable to be near our opposite. Renny believes this Beast is tied closely to the Cabinet – if not an actual member himself.

There’s balance. Our Council is complete as is their Cabinet. Yet when you were born, both sides felt your power, knew that you would have the power to alter destinies - for the good and bad. No one has ever been born with the powers you possess. It’s a law that we may not interfere with someone’s destiny. We may persuade through a variety of means – but each person’s own free will and their mapped destiny is theirs alone.

You, Lauren, have the power to alter destinies - should you choose. The universe is perfectly balanced and the Cabinet very much wishes for you to help them, and I believe it only fair to tell you our Council wishes for the same thing. We don’t wish for you to alter destinies, but we definitely don’t want you to assist the Cabinet in their efforts.

Rewsna broke the rules by contacting you initially. She should not have done that, and because of her intervention, the Beast was permitted access to you and was allowed to alter your destiny. Had Rewsna never made that initial contact, you would be happily on the way to the future you had mapped for yourself a very long time ago. She had only the best of intentions that day on the bus, but that’s irrelevant. She broke the rules. Her interference allowed the floodgate of attacks you’ve been exposed to ever since.

The Council got together recently and decided it was in our, and your, best interest to share any knowledge that we could, that would not negatively impact your destiny. The hope was that some information or a rudimentary explanation might guide you to the right path. We all believed that denying you the information you so desperately wanted served neither of us very well. That’s the good news. But now that the entire Council has opened itself up to you, the Cabinet has been given the same access. If they are able to find you – they’ll try to manipulate you and…” Mike didn’t finish his thought: it looked like he was uncomfortable providing this information and being so open. All along I had been upset with Rewsna for talking in circles, yet in the end it was her explanations that allowed this Beast thing to take away two years from me. Mike was allowing me to process all this information and chose to remain quiet.

Finally I asked, “So this means I can ask you anything I want and you’ll just answer me?”

He shook his head slightly, “You can ask me anything you want. If I believe the answer will not do you harm or create a vortex in your or someone else’s destiny, I will answer it.”

“Rewsna, what’s her role on the Council?”

He smiled at me and responded with, “You don’t want to take a guess?”

“Confidence?”

“Yes, she’s that voice you’ve always heard when you needed to do something that you were fearful of. It was her voice that whispered ‘you can do it.’ I always find it amazing how in some people she carries such a dominant presence over Doubt; with others she can appear weak and Doubt is strong.”

“So Confidence and Doubt work together? So you’re all one big happy family or something?”

“No, not even close – as I said it’s very uncomfortable to be near the member of the Cabinet that serves as our opposite; but we are all very familiar with our alters. We do not choose to spend time with them, but when a person is making a key decision in life, and we are trying to guide, the Cabinet member is trying to be just as persuasive. The Cabinet members prey on the same souls that we are trying to assist. We, yin and yang, over the millennia have become very familiar with each other.”

“But you introduced yourself to me as the Beast Master, and you said over the millennia, so you aren’t human?”

“I am the Beast Master, but that’s a special talent I possess. It’s not a role on the Council. It’s simply a skill that I possess that others do not. My role on the Council is Fidelity. As the Beast master it was my destiny to communicate to and for animals, which compliments my role on the Council. The Council members are all human, but the Cabinet members are…not exactly human.”

“Not exactly human? What exactly are they?”

“This isn’t a question I can answer. Too much knowledge of the Cabinet is dangerous. As long as you know the facts, that they exist and that they are similar but full of negative energy, that should help you make the right choices when you need to make them.”

I looked away from Mike briefly and saw that Peanut had let himself in through the screen door. He sat patiently at my feet. He wasn’t the slightest bit nervous about Mike being here, and his calm was something I trusted. I reached down and scratched his ears and Peanut leaned heavily into me.

After a minute or so I turned my attention back to Mike, “So this game plan you asked me about, do you have any ideas? It sounds like I’m never going to get my life back unless I take it back, so I guess my only game plan is to take it back.”

Chapter 19

Mike and I spoke for hours. I seemed to do most of the talking while he nodded his encouragement without giving any advice. He reminded me of one of