“I know what it means.” He glowers at me a moment.
Dudley may have only one person on the planet he’s zeroed his interests in on, but I’ve surmised that he was blown down from the heavens as much for me as he was Skyla.
“Never mind.” The swells die out, and we head for shore. My swimming trunks are wet and crisp, and I’m starting to chaff—never a good thing.
Fire pits dot the shoreline with bodies gathered around them huddling for warmth. I find the blaze illuminating Skyla’s beautiful face and know I’m at the right one. She’s seated next to Laken and Bree. It’s nice to see Skyla surrounding herself with good people. I want that for her. I want everything for her.
Ellis backs his truck up to the party and sets up a few stage lights in the back and a working microphone that screeches into the night like nails on a chalkboard.
“What’s this? Entertainment?” I take a seat on the sand, amused, just as Lexy falls to my side.
“I’ll say there’s going to be entertainment,” Skyla growls audibly at Lex, and I’d be lying if I didn’t feel like that was gift enough.
Gage heads over and pulls Skyla onto his lap. It looks uncomfortable—for both of them.
Coop and Brody hop into the back of Ellis’s truck with him.
Coop grabs the mic and taps it until it expels ear-piercing feedback, assuring the entire Western Hemisphere it is indeed on.
“Logan”—he says my name so loud it pops through the air like a firework—“I think everyone here wants to wish you a very happy birthday.”
“Unbirthday!” a female voice shouts, and we turn to find Chloe meandering over. She offers a friendly wave of the middle finger as she lands in our circle.
I suppose she’s the one responsible for the unbirthday party, considering she is the one who killed me—but, because I intend on having a good birthday, I ignore her.
Coop continues, “Dude, I don’t do this for very many people. In fact, I haven’t done this for anyone other than a few of my old classmates back at Ephemeral, so consider yourself a lucky bastard, or unlucky. You decide which.”
A warm beat pumps from the speakers, thumping its rhythm over this distal tip of the island. The wind picks up, and the palm trees bend their ears our way as if Paragon herself were ready to hear Coop belt out a tune. The night is lit up with a party atmosphere as Coop grabs the mic hard, his head rocking out to the music, and just about every girl here screams her head off for him. Both Brody and Ellis turn around with a mic in hand and—holy—I think I’m about to be treated to an epic treat.
They start in on a familiar song—with Ellis and Brody as the backup singers and Coop taking the lead. It takes me a second to realize the lyrics belong to a popular rap song, only Coop is belting it out slow and dramatic, adding a comical, ironic spin. He’s dead serious as he sings his way into every girl’s heart with Laken howling and cheering the loudest.
I laugh my ass off as Ellis and Brody growl out the chorus. I’ll admit, they do harmonize nicely. Coop sings the song softly, letting the expletives rip as uncomfortably and smooth as can be. It’s fucking hilarious, and as the song nears completion, I’m bummed I didn’t get a chance to record it.
Every single one of us gets up on our feet, wild with applause, as Coop jumps down, followed by his two-man crew. Ellis’s speakers continue to whip out a playlist from his phone as bodies move and groove way too close to the fire if you ask me, but that about sums up my life, so why not?
“Dude.” I give Coop a slap on the shoulder. “Well fucking done!” I nod over to Brody. “Not bad, Bishop. Who knew you had a set of pipes?”
“That’s my brother!” Chloe swoops over to him, and they drift into the gyrating crowd.
Dudley comes up with his perennial bored expression, his I’m-better-than-you-and-I-fucking-know-it demeanor. “Nice show.” He glares at Coop as if he’s about to drum up a citizen’s arrest. “You’re quite talented.” He nods solemnly as if digesting this bit of non-information. He clears his throat and swallows hard. “I’m proud of you.” He gives Coop a slight bow before turning toward me. “You, however, not so much. But do keep trying. I’m sure there’s something redeemable you can impress me with yet.” He takes off in a plume of darkness, the visual equivalent of a black hole, and it would figure that Marshall alone could manufacture one.
“Wait!” I shout after him. “Why would I care to impress you?” But it’s too late. He’s long gone.
Skyla and Gage come over, and she wraps her arms around me from the side, her belly distending over mine. “Happy birthday, sweet prince,” she whispers as she offers a brush of her lips to my neck. Skyla seems to have lost the ability to get up on her tiptoes, but I appreciate the effort. “We have a gift for you.”
“No. I can’t take anything from you guys.” Skyla and Gage are broke with a capital everything. “I’d feel bad if you spent a single dollar.”
“We knew you’d say that.” Gage gives me a light sock to my arm. “So we didn’t technically purchase anything—not something that you didn’t once already own anyway.”
“Okay.” I’m almost afraid to ask.
Skyla frowns a moment before a tiny smile bleeds through. “We’re gifting you back the Mustang.” Her chest bucks as if she’s about to bawl. “That is, after I have the babies if you don’t mind. It’ll be a million years until it’s practical again. But I’m going to miss her, so, if it’s no trouble, I’d still like a ride once in a while.”
“Deal.” My heart breaks a little. I gifted that to Skyla for her seventeenth birthday. I wanted her to keep it forever, but I get it. With the babies and the cost of insurance, it just doesn’t make sense. “She’ll still be yours. I’ll just hold her for you indefinitely.”
“Thanks, man.” Gage pulls me into a hug. “You’re my favorite brother.” He gives a wry smile. Gage used to say that when we were growing up, and I’d shoot back you don’t have a brother, only now he does, and it means a lot to me.
Laken and Coop pop up again. “We’re taking off.” Coop shakes my hand and pulls me in. “So, when are you going to fill me in on this secret shit you’ve got going on with Brody and Ellis?” He pulls back, the slight look of hurt ripe on his face. “Dude, you trust Brody Bishop over me?” He shakes his head. “Let’s talk sometime.” He and Laken say their goodbyes to everyone, both looking equally stunned and pissed.
Laken leans into Skyla. “Are you in on this?”
Skyla doesn’t say a word as Laken and Coop leave shaking their heads.
“Nice work.” Chloe starts in on a slow clap. “Divide and conquer is usually the enemy’s job, Logan. Sometimes, you just make it too easy.”
Something bright flickers from the sky, and a few of the girls in the crowd scream as every person on the sand cranes their neck skyward.
“Shit,” Gage seethes.
“Looky here!” Chloe sings. “It looks as if Wesley’s gift showed up after all.”
Four glowing orbs, fat and round as Volkswagen Beetles, settle just above the Cape, purple and green in nature, all of them hovering, floating, unidentifiable flying objects.
“God, this is going to make the news!” Brielle shouts.
Gage steps in until his shoulder touches mine. “This is going to set the entire world on edge.”
“It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?” Chloe hums as she strides down the shoreline, her long, dark tendrils flowing behind her like vipers. “I insisted on having green in there somewhere since it is your favorite color,” Chloe coos as the rest of the party snaps pictures to every social media outlet on the Internet. Chloe slithers her way between Gage and me, snapping away selfies of the three of us, the unnatural northern lights dotting over each of our heads like some demonic halo. “The end of your people is nigh, indeed. Happy birthday, Logan.”
9
Blood Roses and Broken Promises
SKYLA
The lights above the Cape remain a newsworthy event taking place on the distal tip of t
he island for the next few months. And now the feds, our United States government, heck, the governments of multiple nations have sent scientists to explain away this phenomenon.
Come September, Gage is back at Host full-time, and I’m left brooding at home, trapped alone with my mother and her nippily laced conversations. I had meant to enroll for classes. Scratch that. I did enroll for classes until Gage pointed out that twins typically come early. Childbirth and finals simply don’t mix. Not to mention my morning sickness still rears its ugly head whenever the hell it wants. So that leaves me with Lizbeth Landon to whittle away the hours. I’ve become her very own pregnant pet project—her uterine ingénue whose body is no more her own than it is Lizbeth’s. Mom’s daily lectures are often followed by glossy pictorials and quasi-gruesome discussions, such as the fact my baby will be born bloody and wet, covered with thick white goo, which is classified under the scientific name of cheese.
My days are filled with all things newborn as my mother prepares me for my own maternal state of mind with the meticulous guidance of a prenatal master. I may not be experiencing the first semester of my sophomore year, but there is a distinct scholastic semblance with all the oral sex oration. My mother has no shame when it comes to deep thoughts on the benefits of kick-starting labor through cunnilingus—which comprises a great portion of the prenatal pep talks that start before I say good morning and end just after I say good night.
Like today, for instance, I learned that the alarming amount of pus that was leaking from my nipples is actually called colostrum, a yummy, fortified liquid that packs a nutritional punch. My mother highly suggests I let Gage feast on this delicious oozing fare. The breakfast of breastfeeding champions is terrific for new fathers’ immune systems as well—especially since the baby (babies, but she doesn’t need to know that little duplicating nugget just yet) isn’t here to benefit. The focus of our mother-daughter time together is strictly focused on my vagina and the human contents it is about to pump out in a few short months.
Prenatal coaching might occupy my days, but my nights, well, my nights are consistently set to a pattern you can set a clock to, or better yet, an orgasm. Marshall Dudley is an animal—a highly uninvited one at that. Those tiger-eyes of fire, the body of a sexed-up gorilla hell-bent on conquering its mate, the stamina of every earthen creature combined. Each and every midnight he stalks me through my dreams, although he denies it to a fault, and if that’s true, then my subconscious must be stalking him. This is sexual warfare in its prime, our bodies battling it out with stealth determination, Jacob and God wrestling until dawn, the unholy version. This is no friendly battle. This is a flat-out hostility. His body and mine both in enemy territory, his penis versus my vagina. All holy hell breaks loose from midnight till dawn and leaves me breathless, depleted of sound body and mind. But I am a very married woman, and this is carnal treason at its best. I’m done—ready to drive a stake through that Sector’s unbeating heart if I have to. This has got to stop once and for all.
My hands flatten over his granite wall of a chest, his chiseled abs cut hard as marble.
“Marshall,” I pant into him. “Why in the name of all that is holy are you doing this to me?”
He continues his forceful thrusts as he surges to completion, his body trembling violently over mine, his hot mouth moving over me like lava.
His lips drift near my ear. “I thought that was your favorite position?” he whispers heated and rushed into my ear.
“No, not that. In general, why are you here? And why am I unable to resist you? This needs to end, and it needs to end now.”
“Skyla.” He pulls up enough to examine me. The tender sunlight of this manufactured world offers his comely features a salmon glow. “You mean to tell me, you don’t know?”
“Know what?” Here it is, the key I’ve been looking for. The shut-off valve might literally be just a breath away, and my heart pounds anxious for him to spit it out.
“Hey!” a familiar voice barks. “Get the hell off her!”
Both Marshall and I crane our necks to get a better look at the shadowy figure as he comes into the light. Logan shines like a topaz god in this sodden field of erotic dreams.
“Logan?” I’m slightly confused and more than slightly hoping this isn’t going to turn into a full-blown orgy. I haven’t climaxed yet, and usually Marshall always knocks it out of the park before leaving me to return to my slumber.
Logan swoops in with a broom appearing in his hand. He swats the junk out of Marshall until he rolls off and dissolves into the light pouring down from an opening in the dismal sky.
“Skyla.” Logan gets down next to me and waves his hand over my body until I’m wearing something that loosely resembles a toga, and my giant blooming baby belly is magically restored where it should be. My feet feel slightly stifled, and I glance down to find them snug in a pair of turquoise cowboy boots.
“Cute!” I click my heels together and run my hand over my bloated stomach. “Marshall never includes my belly. I think he likes the maneuverability of the old me. So is this another one of those fucked-up dreams?” I sit up on my elbows as his eyes expand a bit at my expletive. “Sorry. But it’s my dreamscape. I think I’m allowed to be as salty as I like. And I hate to break it to you, but if you’re looking for a quickie, I’m way too exhausted to please, not to mention I’m feeling rather lucid, so at this point it can’t be excused as a dream. Honestly, I don’t know how Marshall gets me to do those things. I swear, it’s like a spell, only that’s not right. More like a mind trick? A dick trick! That’s what it is at the end of the day.”
“I’m not here to have sex with you.” He gently moves the hair from my forehead. “And for the record, this is now my dreamscape. Welcome.”
I glance around and note the dingy landscape is replaced with a far more familiar territory, a lush hillside, a crystalline unblemished sky. I’ve been here before with Logan many times. It’s relaxing, safe.
“Oh God, I’m so embarrassed.” I bury my face in my hands a moment. “I can’t believe you just witnessed that.”
“Tell me about it. I’ll have to wash out my brain with a blowtorch just to scour it out of me.”
“I didn’t want that. He just comes. No pun intended.” I shrink a little. The greedy bastard did come and then left me to quiver just shy of the finish line.
“I heard that.”
“Never mind. I’m sure Gage will accommodate as soon as I get back.” I wince. “Sorry.”
“No, I’d much rather he than Dudley. Don’t worry. I’ll get to the bottom of this bullshit he’s up to. But I actually pulled you in for another reason.”
“Is this about the traitors? Those Barricade bitches who think turning on their own people is the only way to save their asses?”
“Skyla,” he says with a hint of disappointment. “They have families, little ones. They’re frightened. And no offense, but with all the illusions Wes is providing, it doesn’t look too promising for us. The world is on the edge of its seat. They want whoever it is that’s invading this planet contained in a locked cell—preferably dissected for research purposes. And if they ever say ‘take me to your leader,’ it will not be Wes, Skyla. It will be you.”
“He has framed us well, hasn’t he?” I sigh into the grim reality.
He gives a curt nod and helps me up. “There’s a man named Ichabod Travers. He’s elusive as shit, and I’ve finally tracked him down. He’s responsible for all the wild stunts going on in South America.”
“The equator phenomenon.” I nod. Drake and Ethan have been filling me in for weeks. Hell, they’ve been filling everyone in, anyone who will listen for that matter. “How are we getting there?”
“Just a simple, light drive, and then we wait until he shows up.”
“Then what?” I was very clear to everyone that the prisoners need to be taken alive. I don’t want Nephilim blood on my hands—again. Last time we committed a globetrotting slaughter, it turned into a real can of whoop a
ss directed at the two of us. Suffice it to say, I really do want them to live.
Logan takes my hands, and the earth moves beneath our feet. The atmosphere changes to something hotter, muggier, the scent of something deep fried hangs so thick in the air you can take a bite of it.
“What kind of name is Ichabod?” I ask as Logan takes me by the hand through the small, winding cobbled streets.
“A name you don’t mess with.”
“He’s that tough, huh?”
Logan leads us into a bar with castanets and a mariachi band lighting up the night with a festival of sounds. “He’s tougher.”
“How are we taking him down?”
“I’m taking him down.” He offers a quick smile. “Dudley has an arsenal of weapons to choose from. I found something that looks like a mini spirit sword but has the net effect of a stun gun. He’ll be out long enough for me to toss him in that magic mirror.” He pauses a moment to take me in. “You’re beautiful.”
“Thank you, I think. I don’t feel very beautiful these days.”
“You should. You glow with the light of a thousand stars.” His eyes linger on mine a moment too long before he leads us through a thick crowd, through a dense cloud of cigarette smoke, and the heavy scent of tequila. Voices rise around us at riot levels, laughter mixed with screams merged with carnal groans of delight. He points to a table in the back where a dozen men play poker.
“God, this is all so cliché it might as well be painted on velvet.” I struggle to catch my breath from the midnight jaunt we just endured.
“That’s him in the red shirt.” Ichabod is buff, tall, dark, and handsome in a stunning sort of way. That explains all the cantina girls ogling him and snapping his picture on the sly. “This might be cliché at first sight, but every single person in here is one of our own.”
“Oh my God.” I stagger forward. “Nephilim?”
“Celestra.”
My jaw goes slack. I’ve never seen such a large group of our kind congregated in one place, let alone Celestra in general.
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