Chloe scoffs. “This is the moment you choose to be petty? Oh Lakey, Lakey, Lakey-Poo. One day you will rouse from this mental block—a far less sanitized arousal than the one you’re having now, and you will rue the day you opened your legs to Wesley Edinger and closed your heart to Cooper Flanders. And then I will remind you of your indiscretions, your foolish parade of affection, and it will be you who rots in misery. It will most certainly be you rolling around your bed in agony knowing you’ve trampled under your heel a pure light that I too now question—along with everyone else— if you ever deserved.”
Shit. I close my eyes a moment. My head is still pounding from this migraine that started as soon as I set foot in that demonic kingdom of my brother’s late last night and it hasn’t let up since.
“Enough.” I nod to Gage. “Take your bride. Go and enjoy one another. Have a feast of the flesh.” My lips twitch with a sick sense of pleasure. “Take an extended honeymoon.” No skin off my nose if you never come back. “Chloe, I’d ask you to apologize, but I realize you’re incapable. Now if you’ll both excuse us, Laken and I have a daughter to tend to—two of them, a bed of our own to warm. It’s been a long night and an even longer morning.” I take a deep breath as I glance past Gage as they start to take off. “We’ll get together after the holidays and strategize.”
That’s when my powers will be fully restored, and I am counting down the hours. The Justice Alliance took them away five months ago—a six-month suspension for screwing with Coop. It was worth it. And the fact that I still have Laken by my side makes everything seem worthwhile. I’d go a lifetime without a single extraterrestrial power if it assured me she would never leave me, never look at me again with the disdain she had in her eyes, in her heart, for the monster she thought I had become.
Yes, she is still with me, but she is also slowly rousing from that fog her brain has been in for the last solid year. She remembers Coop, their marriage, but with about as much emotion as you might have after watching a movie. It hasn’t hit home yet, this great usurping of her spirit. It hasn’t sunk into her bones, this tragedy that’s given us the greatest blessing of all—each other.
And will it still be a blessing, or will it be a curse when her heart catches up to her mind? Will she look at me with disdain again? Take my precious daughter, Charlie, away from me—and she is mine, despite what the masses want to believe.
I love Charlie with the same ferocity I love Tobie.
And then there is Eli, my only son, my heir to this wickedness that has absorbed me. I suppose the girls are, too, but it’s Eli that I’m afraid for most. Demetri likens girls and women to pets, but the men—you are either his charge or his enemy. Eli will have to fit into his mold and become the ardent Fem that Demetri will undoubtedly flesh him out to be.
Yes, I will have a say in it, in as much as I agree with Demetri. Just like I was forced to agree with Gage last night as that shit show unfolded. He did it. A wedding—married to my own wife, ex-wife. Chloe.
Laken presses a firm kiss to my lips, heated as a fire. “I need to lay Charlie down. Come straight to bed. That is a command, Wesley Edinger.” Her lips curve with devilish intent. “I’m pulling you out of that dark place, with my thighs if I have to. Let’s make more babies, Wes. Let me prove to you that I won’t fly away. I’m no bird with a broken wing. I’ve chosen you over Cooper, and I’m ready to seal our union properly.” Her heavenly blue eyes hang over mine before she whisks off with Charlie.
The fire crackles and pops loud as a gunshot, and I look to the flames, unable to pull my gaze away. They dance and they flicker, burn with a relentless fervor, but eventually they will go out in a whimper. If I’ve learned anything from my short tenure on this planet, it’s that nothing lasts forever.
Success, money, fame, it will eventually melt away like snow or end up with someone else. Everything is temporal. Unsecure.
The flames rise like demons in the night, licking the walls, threatening to step outside of their bounds.
Gage and the maddening wine of his power have already become a blemish, a bruise on my existence. His exertion of authority has already become a coat of flames around me, placed over my shoulders by my brother himself.
So help me God, if Gage costs me Laken. After all we’ve been through, finding our way back to one another, creating life together in a harmonious union of our love. If Gage costs me Laken because of his burgeoning need to solidify his power, I swear on all that is holy that I will turn on him. And if my father doesn’t like it, I’ll turn on him, too.
If Laken cuts me out of her life because of what Gage has determined to be my fate, then my brother will have hell on his hands that his ex-wife only wishes she could give him.
I will destroy Gage Oliver. I will crush him under my heel. And then once my father turns on me, and he will undoubtedly do so once his favorite son is extinguished, I will crush him twice as hard.
Demetri is the purveyor of all of this misery, all of this grief. But I can no longer excuse Gage as the puppet. No, my brother stepped fully into his own less than twenty-four hours ago. He spread his dark wings, roared with new lungs, and exerted his wicked power over me, first.
Cost me Laken and I will drag my brother and every last Fem down to hell with me.
It will be my great, great pleasure.
5
The Scourge
Skyla
Bone-deep grief. Soul-soaked anger. Each moment of every day I vacillate between the abject grief of losing my husband and its darker twin, the disgusting desperation of wanting to do anything, to give up every soul on the planet to have him back—to the suffocating need to destroy him.
Ellis stopped by and let me know that he, Logan, and Coop paid the Transfer a visit. Logan wanted Gage on a spit—those were Ellis’ exact words and they warmed me, but I laughed, too, because Logan built this monster just as much as Demetri did. That’s another gift of being blindsided with grief. Blame. How I love to point the finger at my mother, Demetri, Logan, Gage, at the universe, fate, God.
Desperation mixed with fury, inextricably intertwined with blame is a trifecta of bondage. I want to beg, lash out, and kill all at the very same time. I can’t for the life of me keep my emotions in check. In fact, it is the very last thing I ever want to do. I want to roar. I want to riot against the Nephilim who have sided with the Steel Barricade and claw Wesley Edinger’s wicked eyes out for twisting their arms. I want to lacerate Demetri with Gage fashioned as a knife.
I don’t know what could possibly hurt that evil creature. Perhaps if Gage, his favorite son, his only son when you get down to celestial brass tacks, were to inflict a fatal wound, it would take.
But the fatal wound is mine at the moment. My wings proving immovable. And I am so fucking sick of likening myself to a butterfly pinned to a wax board—the victim of circumstance, the sickening whimpering damsel in distress.
I want to pin my mother down and watch her bleed. I want to know what she’s made of. Certainly, she’s made a sport of dissecting me, exposing my deepest desires and then profiting from them. So easily she upturned my world. She yanked the tablecloth from beneath me like some dime store magician. She has made me walk the tightrope she strung out high over this dismal rock long before I was born.
And perhaps she had my father killed. My father would never have wanted this for me. He would have stood in her way. God knows any opposition to my mother lands you in a very dangerous place.
Look where Gage is. Look where I am. Desperate grief, hellish anger, and the despondent need to direct blame squarely on other people’s shoulders.
Bone-deep grief. Soul-soaked anger. I need to pick an emotion and stick to it. I need to pick a horse so I can get back in the race. It all sounds right and just, but the truth is, I can’t even pick between my toothbrush or a comb.
I have gone feral both inside and out, unrecognizable to myself. A stranger passes me in the mirror, so very frightening I want to get away from her. It’s a miracle the b
oys regard me as anything at all.
But my own mother was there for me when I found my way back to my bed that night. Holding me, rocking me, kissing the wounds that she helped inflict.
It’s so hard to damn Gage to hell on his own entirely. No. He will definitely need an entourage to accompany him. It’s only fitting. They helped get him there to begin with.
“Earth to Messenger.” Bree slashes her hand over my eyes in a desperate attempt to revive me. “You’re like having a sack of potatoes around these days.”
My eyes dart her way, the quick frenetic movement of a lunatic. My body has been paralyzed with an insurmountable dark energy just waiting to unleash on anyone and, my God, Brielle Landon will do just fine.
Laken kicks Bree in the shin as we sit in lawn chairs, watching the kids in that bounce house Bree and Drake dragged into the Landon backyard. The oversized castle jerks and moves in jagged spasms as the kids scream with glee inside. Nathan, Barron, my little sister Mystery, Misty—the one who also happens to hold Demetri’s demented DNA, Brielle’s son, Beau—Emily’s daughter Ember, and, of course, Chloe’s poor castoff, Tobie are all enjoying the hell out of it. Enjoying the hell out of their youth, not caring that they live on a rock in the middle of nowhere. A place the sun chooses not to visit. We are wet with fog, the dew clinging to our skin like perspiration.
Emily Morgan is here with us with her pale as paper skin, that dark round bushel of hair that sits on top of her head like a tumbleweed. She’s the only one willing to walk to the bounce house periodically to make sure those screams do not equal any broken limbs. Em’s body is ripe with child at the moment, her belly distended nearly two feet in front of her. She could have a litter of three just as easily as she could have one. My stomach sours at the thought because I did have three in my own belly at one time.
Bree picks up a beer and swills it my way. That’s what Bree’s life has devolved to—day drinking.
Drake, my stepbrother, sucks them down as if it were a sport he took careful practice to master and now, so does she. That’s one thing I appreciated about Gage. He didn’t drink, and neither do I. Don’t like the smell. I don’t like feeling any more out of control than I have to. But I’ve seen Em have an occasional glass of wine, using her pregnant belly as a shelf to hold it. To each his own. She is having a Landon, after all, her second child with Brielle’s dimwit of a husband. Harsh words, I know. But I’ve been in one serious harsh mood for days now. I’m not safe to be around, not in body or in spirit.
“Guess what, bitches?” Bree gives a hearty wink my way. Most likely because I’ve been taking everything the wrong way these days—especially her moronic words to me—and I almost slaughtered her because of them.
Laken snarls over at her and pulls the blanket higher over sweet baby Charlie. She’s a toe-head. Coop showed Laken and me a baby picture of himself at that age and they could be twins. Coop tried to play it off in an isn’t-it-funny kind of way, but Laken rolled her eyes and countered that she, too, looked just like Charlie at her age. Point taken.
“What, Bree?” Em rolls her neck, her dark stiff curls never moving as she swings her head from side to side. Emily has always been pasty, but with each passing day of this new pregnancy, her skin grows paler to the point it’s impossible to believe she has a drop of blood in her.
“So”—Bree jumps in her seat, repositioning herself as her gaze ping-pongs to all three of us—“I’m thinking it’s time to have another kid.”
“No.” I don’t bother sugar coating it. “It’s bad enough Em is doing it. You don’t need another kid. You need to focus on the one you have and do something constructive with your life other than shoving malt liquor down your throat.”
Bree squawks and chirps, but not an intelligible sound emits from her.
“Skyla.” Laken shakes her head and frowns at my somewhat uncalled for outburst as if she wanted me to apologize.
No, she is not getting an apology out of me. I may just go the rest of my life without apologizing to anyone. The Factions come to mind, all of those dead Noster. There are plenty of other people in line in front of Bree that I might need to beg forgiveness from.
Charlie roots for food around Laken’s chest. Those adorable pouty lips suction to Laken’s skin until she pulls up her shirt and begins nursing her.
“I’m going to have another one.” Laken forces a tight smile Bree’s way. “Wes is up for it, and I want the kids to be close in age.”
Words choke their way right up my throat. “Charlie has a sibling her exact same age—Eli. In fact, they were born the same day. You could not get any closer than that. Please do not entertain that demon in your bed any longer than necessary.” My God, I need to shake Ezrina, Marshall, or my mother until one of them fixes whatever the hell is wrong with Laken. “And I thought you were going to wait until after the holidays to decide between Wes and Coop?” I knew it was bullshit the second she spewed it.
Laken averts her eyes. “He’s not Gage, Skyla. You can stop having a transference issue with him.” Her tone is snippy, and her gaze cuts slyly in my direction before reverting to the babe in her arms.
“I can’t breathe.” I spring to my feet. “Em, please watch the boys.”
Emily groans as she cranes her neck back in that direction. “No, Messenger.” That stone-cold, almost corpse-pale face of hers glowers my way. “You’re always running away when the going gets tough. You put us in a shithole. And, as an appointed leader, you need to stomp this fire out instead of running away from it.”
Holy crap. I’m going to break all kinds of records by skinning three witches in less than five minutes.
“Let her go.” Bree waves me off. “I’ll watch the brats. We know you’re pissed because Gage chose Chloe. Heck, I was pissed at first, but I got over it and you’ll get over it, too.”
If it’s at all possible for steam to come from my ears, it’s happening now.
“I’m going to pass out, or maim,” I whisper mostly to myself.
Bree gags as she rolls her eyes. “Relax, Skyla. Logan is up at bat next and he’s freaking hot. Not a lot of people are feeling sorry for you.” She glances to Em momentarily before looking back at me. “We had to talk Lex off a cliff literally when she found out. She knows this was the nail in their casket. Lex and Logan’s ship names were still Lex and Logan. Sure, they would have been adorable, but you and Logan are a classic. You’re getting your true love comeback. People would die to have that. Lex would give her left boob. And you know what?” She looks to Em and Em shakes her head ever so slightly as if she knew what word vomit was about to spew from Bree’s mouth next. “No, I’m going to say it. I’m happy about it. I’m happy that both of my best friends get to be with the loves of their life. You and Logan and Chloe and Gage.”
A living rage percolates from me. All I see is red.
Bree stands and starts backing up, her hand held out as if to stop me from advancing.
“Come on, Skyla.” Her breathing grows erratic as if she were expecting a decapitation, and she should. “You had Gage for years. You knew whose son he is. You knew he had a destiny to fulfill.” Her eyes sharpen over mine, and for a brief moment I see someone else entirely inside of her. “If you had just thought a little more with your head and not your emotions, you wouldn’t be in this predicament and neither would your people.”
“You have a death wish,” I breathe the words as my feet carry me to her.
“No, Skyla. I don’t.” She knocks a lawn chair down between us. “I’m sorry. I thought you might need to hear it. Sometimes you need your very best friend to tell you all the hard things.” She’s panting now as I circle that silly piece of plastic she set in my way.
Brielle darts for the trailer she and Drake live in, set in the middle of the Landon backyard. The fog billows in our wake as I bolt after her. I have never so much thought a bad thing about Bree, but I want to kill her. I want to inflict pain on her. Make her pay for the obscenities that flew from her mouth. Thos
e warped and twisted words that painted such a gruesome picture. I catch her by the shoulders, spin her hard, and slam her into the aluminum house with so much fervor an impression of her body indents into the tin can. Her eyes roll back into her head, her knees give way, and I hold her up.
“Oh my God,” I pant in disbelief as my best friend hangs limp in my arms. “Bree, wake up. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”
She shakes her head and her strawberry blonde curls bounce over her shoulders. “I’m fine, Skyla.” It comes out airy as she struggles to catch her breath.
“You meant what you said. You’re happy for Chloe.” I shake my head, incredulous. “You have always loved her.”
Bree’s eyes glow crimson as fresh tears fill them.
“My life’s mission is to kill your best friend, Brielle. I’m going to kill her. She will die by my hands. And if you have a problem with that, we can’t be friends anymore. Understand?”
Her eyes widen a notch as my words settle deep in her bones. She gives a weak nod and I head back where Laken rises to meet me, that sweet babe nuzzling away at her breast.
“I live to destroy Wesley Edinger.” I shake my head at her. “If you are not for me, you are against me. I’m afraid this is where we part ways, Laken. I am all through entertaining my enemies.”
I brush past her and Em steps into my path, those large dark eyes examining me, looking into the nexus of my being as if she sees the real me.
All Hail the King (Celestra Forever After Book 6) Page 8