“It wanted us to be mindless puppets like its other stupid servants, who clearly didn’t know what they were signing on for,” Gage says as though it should be obvious.
“I don’t find it a coincidence that it picked off Jude—the most resistant—but didn’t come after the three of us,” I point out.
“I made it too easy because I was drunker than I realized,” Jude states as though he feels stupid enough and I’m only making it worse.
“Or maybe that’s why she needs surrender,” Ezekiel says quietly, as though he’s picked up my trail and is quickly catching up. “Because it’s a weakness to get that close to it otherwise.”
Everyone grows quiet, and Jude slowly shakes his head. “No. I didn’t struggle for control. I struggled to keep that voice out of my head,” he says quietly. “But it’s not the same as what I felt when I had her all to myself. It’s a different sort of surrender she demands. I just don’t understand it enough to pick apart what I need to do, and all of your ramblings are vague and extremely unhelpful.”
He siphons out in the next instant, and Gage shoots me a look.
“Back off him. You’re making this worse. It’s a complicated setup, and we’re not the same men the old Paca prepared for. It’s not as though he can snap his fingers, and do whatever in the hell it is we did,” he tells me.
“I’m reluctantly understanding of the circumstances,” I confess, my own gaze swinging up to meet his. “We’ve learned a lot these past few weeks that propelled our own individual attachments. But can you honestly say you won’t blame him if she dies because she wasn’t strong enough, simply because Death couldn’t figure out how to love a woman—one who’d quite literally do anything at all for us?”
Ezekiel stays notably silent as he starts kissing down the side of her neck. She makes a sound of pleasure, rousing from her sleep, as Gage continues to stare at me like he doesn’t want to have to answer this question.
“It’s an unfinished puzzle with half-cooked theories and incalculable probabilities,” he finally says, keeping the words quiet. “Don’t put this all on his shoulders just because you’re scared of losing her. We all share that fear right now, him included.”
The old, all-powerful Paca put her secondary trigger inside of us as a backup plan, in case she couldn’t win against Jahl. Only, we can’t use that trigger on Jahl inside his cage without blowing us all to pieces.
We don’t even know how to flip that switch, and will have nothing to rely on but instinct.
Even if we manage to use it, it’s a doomed fate that may not even pay off in Purgatory. Our destructive design was meant for humans on the surface.
“What’s going on?” Paca asks around a distracted moan, as Ezekiel tears down the covers to expose her still battered body that looks a lot worse when she’s naked.
I bite down on my fist, my attention finally removed from Gage, as I fight back the rage coursing through me.
I want to kill the angels who did this to her, even if she did request for it to be done.
I want to strangle a man I’ve shared a true bond with for longer than I can remember, simply because he can’t appreciate how very little time is possibly left for all of us.
There’s nothing left to lose at this point.
If she goes, we go too.
I don’t give a shit what the old Paca wanted. The one on the bed before me is the only one who matters, and I already lived in a world where she didn’t exist for a really long time.
I didn’t know what was missing from our otherwise mediocre lives.
None of us did.
I can’t go back to that now that I finally understand.
As Ezekiel parts her legs and pushes inside her, I stand, already stripping down. Gage does the same.
“Where’s Jude?” she asks, even as she grins wickedly at me.
“He’s taking a breather,” Gage tells her as he leans down to claim her mouth with his, silencing any further questions.
I’m going to enjoy the hell out of her this next week.
Just in case.
I’ve made my decision.
It’s not hard to see that Ezekiel and Gage are on the same page as I am.
Jude’s the only one who may not be willing to pull that trigger and blow us all away with Jahl.
But it’s sure as hell better than ever dealing with the possibility of facing Jahl later, after he’s stronger, and living on without Paca until the beast comes to claim all of Hell.
“We have seven days,” I tell her, which has Gage exhaling harshly as she breaks the kiss with him.
She cuts her gaze to me in confusion, even as Ezekiel works her body under his, fucking her harder after the words leave my mouth.
“What? Why?” she asks, even as another moan slips out of her lips and her legs coil around his waist, heels pressing into his ass to drive him in deeper.
“The why doesn’t even matter at this point, Paca. Seven days,” I repeat as Ezekiel turns them, bringing her down on top of him, as Gage moves to be in front of her.
She doesn’t get to formulate another answer, because Gage uses the new position to his advantage. With one hand in her hair, he drags her mouth to the tip of his cock, and her breath gets shaky before she gives it a timid lick.
Breath hisses between his lips, as I slowly slick down my own cock, preparing it for her undeniably tempting ass.
“You’re going to be thoroughly appreciated this week,” Gage tells her as her mouth begins to work him.
She stiffens when I move in behind her, spreading her ass and readying myself to join in. But she moans around a mouthful of Gage as I slowly push inside, feeling the pressure through that thin, dividing wall, as Ezekiel continues to thrust into her from underneath.
Either we win.
Or we all die together with the only girl who will ever truly love us all equally. I never thought it possible before her.
What’s the point if we find what we’re searching for, only to lose it all in the end?
Chapter 18
JUDE
Her skin is healing fast. The three of them hogged her for the entire night, while lecturing me on spending more time alone with her, ironically enough.
She’s curled against me, possibly because I’m the only one in the bed to be curled against. The others went to speak to Lamar more about this second trigger and to try to learn how to actually use the damn thing.
It’s not as though we have an instruction manual guiding us or anything.
Paca sits up, staring at the side of my face as though she’s surprised to wake up and find me at her side. She gives me a lazy grin as she kisses my chest and starts to get up.
“Stay put,” I tell her, forcing her back to the position I had her.
I pat her on the head when she does as she’s told for once.
“What…are you doing?” she asks as though she’s both worried and confused.
“Thinking,” I tell her, wondering what it is that unlocks this mystery emotion that fuses us together like she’s done with the others.
She continues staring as though that’s not enough explanation.
“You lie like this with the others without protest quite often. Why is it you seem to take issue when it’s me asking to lie with you?” I ask, annoyed with how surprised she looks any time I try to.
She gives me a dry look. “When you ask things like that with a straight face, it makes me worry you’re being serious,” she tells me, throwing my own words back at me.
Narrowing my eyes, I exhale harshly. “I am being serious.”
She snorts as though she finds that humorous. “And you have the nerve to call me ridiculous.”
“You are ridiculous,” I assure her.
Giving me a bland look, she gestures to me. “Why do you look so miserable if you want to be lying next to me?”
Okay…fair enough.
“Because I’m trying to figure out how to do that thing that fuses us together like you did with th
e other three. Kai suggested spending more time with you, but I simply don’t know what I’m missing to make—”
“What?” she asks, her voice getting soft as she sits straight up, staring down at me.
“That thing. I can’t even say the damn word to you right now for whatever fucking reason, but I’m—”
“Jude, why are you trying so hard to do the ‘love thing’ if you’re not in love with me?” she asks as her brow furrows.
I’m not sure if I am or not, to be completely fucking honest. I’m not sure that you want to strangle someone and die to protect them at the same time if you’re in love.
It’s hard to say if I’d lay down my life for her, if the others weren’t so willing to do it already, since that’s not a decision I get to make.
Now this is incredibly uncomfortable, because she’s still staring like she expects an explanation.
“You get stronger when we do that thing with you. I’m the only one left. You need to be the strongest if you’re going to—”
She goes phantom and zaps across the room, angrily stomping over to grab her crown once she turns whole. I watch, with some admitted confusion, as she turns a glare on me.
“What?” I snap.
“You’ve taken a lot of joy out of all this for me. I have seven days left. You won’t be allowed to steal any of that joy by turning the best part about all of this into some power show. Fuck. You.”
She flips me the bird, tears waver on her eyelids, and she turns to stalk out like I’ve somehow done something incredibly wrong.
What the hell have I taken the joy out of?
Why does her expectations for Death rise instead of fall?
“Spend time with her, Jude,” I say, mocking the words Kai said to me yesterday after she dozed off again. “The only way you’ll get there is if you quit fighting long enough to understand.”
Understand what? Hell if I know.
“She was more willing to fuck me when I was fighting her off instead of stripping down and lying next to her,” I gripe to myself, searching for my clothes. “It’s almost like she seeks the challenge now that I’ve gone and made it too easy.”
“It sucks to be you,” Kai quips from behind me, startling the hell out of me.
I turn around to find his lips tilted in a mocking smile, but it falls quickly.
“I take it you didn’t do the love thing,” he says as though he’s now annoyed.
“In the short amount of time she was awake, I got flipped off, managed to make her almost cry, and watched her stalk off like I was ruining these seven days. I don’t even fucking know what I did wrong this time. She seemed to like me better when I fucking hated her and found her too suspicious,” I growl as I angrily shove my legs into my pants.
He crosses his arms over his chest in disapproval.
“It’s not my fucking fault. I flat-out told her what I was trying to do, and she took it as an insult, apparently. I thought she wanted me to do the motherfucking love thing,” I say, finding it much simpler to say that word now that I’m not actually trying to say that word so hard. “It’d be easier if all we had to do was say it…and be able to fucking say it.”
I throw my hands up in the hallway, ready to go kill some things that go bump in the Black Heart.
“If she’s not strong enough, that only leaves us with one option.” Ezekiel’s voice comes out of nowhere, and I look over as he comes toward us from the other end of the hallway. “Will you have it in you to flip that switch and go out with her? Or will you let that thing escape and Paca die in vain? Because it’s clear she’s no longer concerned about whether or not she makes it out alive.”
Glaring, I crack my neck to the side. “I’d rather die with a purpose than die as that thing’s puppet once it breaks free and grows even stronger.”
“That’s answering the question without confessing anything about how you feel for Paca,” Gage says as he siphons in next to Ezekiel, jumping into the conversation as though he’s been eavesdropping all along.
I bristle, not liking the three of them teaming up on me.
“I don’t exist without you,” I say through clenched teeth, flicking a gaze at them one by one. “You no longer exist without her. It makes figuring out how I feel about her much harder when things are exponentially sped up, the pressure mounts, and I’m not the fucking romantic kind. I never planned on falling for any woman to the sad and desperate level you’ve all succumbed to so quickly. I wouldn’t even begin to fucking know how to do that.”
Gage looks around, brow furrowing as though he’s distracted, but before I can ask what’s stolen his attention, another voice cuts in.
“You flip that switch, and you break our one and only deal. It’s the only thing I’m asking of you,” Paca says in a tone that clearly means she’s crying.
I’m not turning around. I never know what to do with her when she fucking cries, and I somehow always seem to make it worse.
Gage whips his head toward her in surprise, so I have no idea what was distracting him previously. I focus on searching the hallway for anything peculiar, refusing to glance at the sniffling woman behind me.
Kai starts toward her, but she must wave him off, since he stops abruptly.
His jaw clenches. “I don’t think you understand what you’re fucking asking—”
“I think the four of you are still plotting against me even now. We’re divided, Kai. In all our decisions, we’re always divided,” she carries on, sniffling again. “The four of you, for better or worse, stick it out together and make decisions together, even if they’re hard—”
“Because we take a fair fucking vote, instead one person making a decision for all four of us,” I interject, earning a glare from Ezekiel.
“All four of you,” Paca whispers, echoing the one part of the comment she of course has to go and focus on.
I turn around to face her at last, and freeze when I see the drips of purple flames streaming from her eyes. The fire burns through the hallway floor…which should be impossible.
This floor is resting in Hell, after all.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I say in a tone that sounds more like I’m talking a caged animal into not attacking.
She wipes away the flaming tears, shaking her head. “You’ll survive. Even if I have to see to it myself,” she states with an unsettling amount of confidence.
“If you die. We die with you. That’s what it means to be in a unit. No one gets left behind,” Kai tells her, eyes narrowing. “Just like they wouldn’t leave me behind in the trials, and neither would you. You seem to think this is still a one-sided relationship, when all of us, even Jude, has proven to you we care about you just as much—”
“No you don’t,” she says coolly, eyes turning volcanic in the next instant.
Only this time, instead of the red lava lines breaking up the black, glossy stone, there are purple lines of flame. We all take a step back, and I idly wonder if theirs was as unconscious as mine.
Her voice echoes around us as the walls begin to wilt, and her body starts a steady glow of that purple flame.
“Back then, you loved me more than I could have loved you. You were tortured, left to rot in agony for all eternity with no hope for anything more than that,” she says as her voice gets a longer echo, power pulsing from her body, even as those purple flame tears continuing leaking.
Her blonde hair whips in the sudden wind that stirs in the otherwise stale hallway.
“You, of course, fell in love with your savior, a deeper love than you could ever imagine in that lifetime. Whereas, I didn’t even exist without you in this life. If I took my eyes off you for longer than a few minutes, I faded into that horrible nothingness, fearing each time I wouldn’t come back. This time, you were my saviors instead of the other way around.”
She chokes back a sob, and we all take a step forward, only to be pushed back by some unseen force that seems to be coming out of her body, as the temperature seems to rise.
The walls are just turning to sludge, bleeding into a different illusion with more hallways to wilt against her heat.
“I watched everything. I pretended to be a part of your unusual family,” she goes on, wiping away her tears as she laughs humorlessly. “I fell so in love with each of you for different reasons that it’s sad to look back on. I talked a big game, but I was tied to you from the moment my eyes first landed on each one. I did this so I’d love you enough to follow through—”
“You can’t possibly know that,” I interrupt, glaring at her anew. “You sound as though you’ve already decided we can’t win, and I don’t like fighting battles where all five of us are guaranteed to lose. We blow the fucking world up, the way we were meant to, and we seal off Hell. We can use that secondary trigger topside without killing ourselves. If we—”
“No!” she shouts.
The entire floor quakes beneath us, and wind rushes us so hard we all stagger back a few steps in surprise, as that fire burns brighter and brighter around her.
Purple flames…
I’ve seriously fucking seen it all from this girl.
“I think we should all take a deep breath,” Gage cuts in, talking over Kai when he starts to argue. “This is tense. The stakes are high. We need to calm down and try to—”
“You are my only fucking mission in this life,” Paca states in that echoing tone that thunders through the other walls that are now melting away, along with the floor and ceiling beneath us.
Volcanic rock rests beneath our feet, and glimpses of a fiery sky taunt us from overhead.
“You’re it. My absolute goal has been to protect you. I don’t even want you to love me if it means you die too. I’ll do this on my own,” she says as she turns to go.
We all freeze as Caesar and Pico appear before us, beginning a slow clap, even as they keep dead eyes.
“Seven days to save or destroy the world,” Pico drawls.
“The Apocalypse and her Four Horsemen decide now is not the best time for a lovers’ quarrel,” Caesar adds, wrinkling his nose. “I’m embarrassed for you.”
One Apocalypse (The Dark Side Book 4) Page 15