“I’ll try to win Glory’s heart.”
She didn’t blink. “And if you can’t?”
“Then....”
“Just spit it out, cowboy.”
“I want to have a family again. Children. If you were human, I’d try to win your heart.”
“You already have my heart.”
“But unless you’re human, we can’t have kids.”
“We have Joy.”
“Joy’s not ours, or yours, or the gang’s. We’re her caretakers. She’s her own special person and deserves the life she was meant to have.”
For the first time ever, Zane felt anger from Jinx directed at him. “So, I’m second choice to Glory and only if I’m human?”
She had never shown jealousy before and it stunned him.
“When I first met Glory, I was a jealous ass,” he said. “I didn’t understand I was picking up on my feelings for Hope and the emotions drowned me. Jealousy is ugly and kills love. Please don’t go there, darlin’. I’ve never lied to you about things of the heart.”
She looked away and closed her eyes. “I love you. I love Joy. My emotions are kinda messed up right now, too.”
“I know you want to be a mother. If you became human, you could have your own babies. If not with me, then with any man you want. You’re amazing.”
“If I was human then I wouldn’t be who I am anymore. I’ve been a vampire for hundreds of years. I don’t even remember what it’s like to be human. I have no desire to go there. I enjoy my life, my work, and ... being immortal.”
Zane smelled a hint of fear in this utterly fearless woman. Did she fear the reaper? Was that the root of all this?
He captured her eyes. “Whatever you decide for yourself, I’ll support like I always have. But you’ve gotta let Joy become human again if there’s a chance. She has a right to grow up. You can still raise her.”
Jinx regarded him with defiance. “She grows up, gets old, and then she dies.”
His gut clenched. “I’ll fight you on this if I have to, Jinx.”
Before she could respond, Joy’s terrified shrieks pierced the twilight, sending them both into instant action. They leapt to their feet and charged to the back of the garden, but the little girl was gone.
Zane sniffed the air. “Bo.”
Bo, the cruelest vampire any of them had ever known.
They jumped the fence and raced to follow the scent, but soon lost it in the thick, damp fog. In all the many years Zane had known Jinx, he had never heard her scream. Until now.
CHAPTER FOUR
* * *
After the great tragedy of the pandemic, Nyx killed the family who lived on the farm next door to my house. Then she took possession of it as a base of evil. When Nyx and her minions left town last September, Dominic bought the property, and with the help of angels and witches, exorcised all trace of remnant evil. When he became human and faced the problem of figuring out what to do with his life, he had chosen to be a farmer. In a world devastated by a pandemic, that seemed a worthy purpose.
Dominic gave up his angelic heritage so he could have an opportunity to win my heart. His father had transformed him from a divine being to mortal, given him seed money to start a new life, and offered blessings. Me? I was crazy about Dominic but still in love with Zane from when I had been married to him in the 1800s. I couldn’t figure out how much of my passion for Zane had to do with that past life, but it didn’t really matter. Hope, that woman from two centuries earlier, had been me—a different name and a different body—but our hearts were the same. Love, I discovered, was timeless, thrilling, and incredibly painful.
The morning after the demon attack and Lailah’s arrival, our small group met to begin training. Sasha, Hallie, and I trudged through the snow to Dominic’s barn where Lailah had earlier gone to make things ready. It was January in northeastern Colorado, sharp wind cut through my many layers of clothes, and a white plume of my breath filled the air. Next to me, Sasha radiated warmth and didn’t need a coat. Her long, curly dark hair whipped around a beautiful face that manifested as a girl who could have been my age. She had also been my guardian angel during my life as Hope. We were the only two charges in her relatively brief existence.
Hallie stopped short and raised a front paw to her mouth to pull a sharp chunk of ice from between her toes. I bent down to help.
“I’m sorry Lailah dissed Rebekah last night,” I said to Sasha.
An anxious expression crossed her face. “Now that we’re both without our mothers, we’ll just have to take care of each other.”
Sasha rarely showed me her vulnerable side. Once, when I prayed for Dominic, Rebekah had asked why people didn’t normally pray for angels. I replied that we figured they were perfect and didn’t need our prayers. She told me they weren’t and they did.
I stood and gave Sasha a quick hug. “Fair enough. I’ve got to learn this whole mothering thing anyway.”
Sasha reached down and patted my bulging stomach. “Have you come to terms with it yet?”
I shrugged. “How could I? Some strange things happened to me this past year, but this one is all kinds of crazy. I wish Professor Greenberg would get in touch.” The professor had been my high school physics teacher before I switched to distance learning for my final semester. He seemed to be my only remaining human link to the all-knowing, all-powerful Caretakers, a class of beings who ranked even higher than the angels and who worked to support the good forces of creation. However, Professor Greenberg had dropped off the radar right after I learned about my pregnancy. The last I heard from him was the night Jesse had killed Belle Starr by throwing her into the Blood Mother River. That same night Jesse had threatened to kill my baby, too.
An involuntary shudder rattled my core.
We cut through the apple orchard that divided Dominic’s property from mine. The barren branches swayed like skeleton fingers, and I grew colder.
Jesse had morphed from the classiest boy I had ever known to a murderous demon right in front of me, and I hadn’t realized it until too late. One moment he was helping to feed those who were starving because of the great tragedy, and the next he was offering up his baby sister as a sacrifice to evil. Now he seemed to be in league with the Devil himself.
I walked faster. I needed to learn how to protect Gen as soon as possible.
Raven, leader of the Sisters of Avalon coven, stood on a ladder hanging a wooden sign above the barn door. Raven had lost her entire family in the pandemic. When Dominic learned she was living in her car, he invited her to stay at his house. Although our age and seriously pretty, I wasn’t jealous because I trusted them. However, concerned others might misunderstand the relationship, Dominic had been sleeping in Dad’s old art studio behind my house.
The sign Raven nailed above the barn door read, TEAM BADASS. I guessed she would be joining our training sessions.
Raven saw us and grinned. “Energy follows thought. I figured we needed a motivational name to live up to.” She climbed down, moved the ladder aside, and hugged me. “Glad you and Spooky Baby survived the attack. We’ve got to make sure you both get through this.” She wore her trademark black jeans, black sweater, black leather jacket, and black boots. Silver occult jewelry wrapped fingers, ears, wrists, and neck. She kept her black hair short and spiky. The badass tag certainly fit the image.
“I take it you’ve met Lailah,” I said. “How did that go?”
“She’s very colorful.”
“A bohemian badass.” Sasha slapped her hand over her mouth.
Sasha was known for blurting before thinking. I found it an endearing fault.
“I won’t tell Ms. BohoAngel-chic you said that,” Raven said, gently steering her inside.
Dominic and Lailah were there, working together to hang what appeared to be a makeshift punching bag made from a large canvas duffel.
Hallie issued a single, sharp bark to announce our arrival.
Lailah glanced at her. “Good morning, Hallelujah. Go s
it on the tractor and watch. You’ll learn how we intend to defend ourselves. In action, your job is to warn of danger and support our efforts by distracting the enemy. Any questions?”
Hallie jumped up onto the tractor’s seat, sat down, and harrumphed. She then regarded Lailah with a haughty look. I loved how my valiant dog interacted with all the supernatural beings in our lives.
Raven and I shrugged off our coats and piled them on top of Dominic’s on the tractor’s hood. A blazing wood stove in the corner took the bitter edge off the air.
Lailah had a variety of items displayed on the workbench. “Holy water, rock salt, silver knives, iron chains, talismans. We’ll employ different methods of defense depending on whether our opponents are natural or supernatural.”
Lailah attached a large piece of cardboard with a bull’s-eye target drawn on it to a pile of hay bales at the far end of the barn. “Humans, choose a set of throwing knives. They’re silver, have been blessed, and are effective weapons against evil creatures. Sasha, you’ll be working with an angel blade.” Lailah handed her a bright dagger, similar to the one she herself had wielded the night before. “Now that you have your sword, try not to die by it.”
Sasha appeared alarmed, and I tried not to show my amusement. She was so young and innocent.
The silver knives that caught my attention had curved handles and blades—a set of three with a three-compartment leather sheath. Dominic and Raven chose sets with straight blades and handles.
Raven attached a sheath to her belt and loaded two of the knives into it. She took the third one and held it for a moment, apparently assessing its weight. Then she twirled it in her fingers, tossed it in the air, caught it, and twirled some more. Abruptly, she turned on her heel, and facing the target from about twenty feet away, raised the knife and threw. It did a double spin in the air, and the point landed smack dab in the middle of the target.
“Wow,” Sasha whispered.
“Seriously?” I managed to say.
Dominic laughed. “Incredible.”
“Impressive,” Lailah said.
Raven looked at us, her expression uncharacteristically sheepish. “I used to twirl batons, and flags, and stuff. In the high school honor guard. In Denver. Before we moved here.”
I couldn’t imagine her in leotards and white go-go boots dancing around the football field twirling things. “Seriously?” I repeated.
“It was before I,” she gestured to her black ensemble, “crossed over to the dark side.”
“Excellent,” Lailah said. “You can help me train the humans. Sasha, you and I will work with our blades, and I’ll teach you what you need to know as an angel.”
I spent the next two hours embarrassing myself. Then, when my right arm ached to the point of utter misery, Lailah decided we had to learn how to throw a punch. Finally, after my knuckles were raw and bleeding from the punching bag, she decided we needed to spar. I almost wept. I prayed for boxing gloves, but none were forthcoming.
Dominic was Lailah’s first sparring partner. “I’m not going to pull my punches,” she said to him, “so don’t hold back. When we fight, we really fight. You’ll learn by doing.”
They circled each other with raised fists for a few dramatic moments until she threw the first punch. Dominic ducked, blocked her punch with his left arm, and returned an uppercut to Lailah’s jaw. She staggered backwards and almost fell.
Sasha gasped. “Uh, oh.”
Raven whistled. “That was all kinds of hot.”
I winked at Dominic. “Nice move, Nicky.”
“I didn’t expect that,” Lailah said, her eyes wide.
Dominic appeared as alarmed as any former angel would look after punching the first female angel. “When I was a guardian, my charge watched a lot of action movies. I watched them, too.”
She rubbed her jaw. “A boxer.” She glanced at Raven. “A knife-thrower.” She looked at me. “What can you do?”
I thought about the streetwise skills Jesse had taught me. “I’m a good kicker and, well, I can make a flashbang out of ingredients from around the house.”
She regarded me with a confused expression.
I threw my aching arms up in a dramatic explosive gesture. “A kind of grenade that doesn’t hurt anyone but makes a blinding light and deafening noise. It’s disorienting to anyone not expecting it.”
Lailah smiled. “Ah, that would definitely be useful.”
Relieved, I hoped it meant I wouldn’t have to box.
“Hit Glory anywhere but in the stomach,” Lailah said to Raven before she paired us up.
I sighed. Well, at least there was that.
Lailah squared off with both Dominic and Sasha at the same time. As much as I wanted to see how that went, it was more important to avoid Raven’s fists. Oddly, she seemed way more eager to punch me than I was to punch her. If I hadn’t been bobbing, weaving, and desperately trying to avoid her fists, I would have examined that fact more closely.
By the time we stumbled out of there, my eye was bruised, Dominic had a split lip, Raven limped, and Sasha’s body didn’t show damage, but she was unusually quiet. Even Hallie was all hang-doggy—she hadn’t been allowed to come to my rescue when Raven punched me.
“We’re all going to die,” Sasha muttered.
“Silver lining? It’ll be with a roar and not a whimper,” I said.
Dominic wiped the blood dripping down his chin. “Well, at least we’ll go down in a blaze of glory.”
“Epic fail,” Raven said.
Hallie whined.
Just call us Team Bummer.
* * *
The James family’s organic dairy operation fortuitously provided us with a lot of ice cream—a remarkable thing during the famine. The post-pandemic famine had struck hard since last year because there was hardly anyone available to harvest fields, and even now supply lines were still in disarray. In September, when my mom joined my sister in scientific research down in Arizona, she left me a lot of money. However, without products to buy, money didn’t count for much.
That said, we ate a lot of ice cream now. I focused on the fact it was organic, rich in calcium, and sweetened with honey. I chose to ignore the downside. The mind’s ability to rationalize was a wonderful thing. Yes, milk, cheese, and butter were also available, but ice cream offered more comfort.
Dominic worried about all of us and had now become our cook. Despite good intentions, my domestic skills left a lot to be desired, and his chef’s hat came in handy.
Attached to the house Dominic had purchased was a small greenhouse where the previous farmers started seedlings prior to the spring plant. Dominic used it throughout the winter to grow what produce he could to keep us nourished. Last fall we had harvested apples from the orchard and preserved them. As far as meat went, none of us could bring ourselves to kill anything besides fish from the river. Perhaps we were wimps, but when you had sacrificed as much as our little group did in order to preserve life, it made it hard to watch the life drain out of the eyes of other earthbound creatures. Feeding Hallie was our greatest challenge, but she fared well on cooked fish, eggs from Dominic’s small laying brood, pumpkin, potatoes, and random fruit and vegetables.
We fared better in this crisis than most, and I was grateful.
I sat at the kitchen table with Sasha and Raven, chowing down on ice cream while Dominic cooked dinner. We ignored his disapproving glances, all determined to soothe our emotional and physical wounds. The source of our misery, Lailah, perched on a stool next to the kitchen’s island, which suppressed our unspoken need to bitch about her.
Hallie lay under the table giving us all the stink-eye for not sharing. Her bright blue eyes were clear, her long blue merle coat shone, and her nails looked good. Resident groomer, Sasha, loved to pamper our intrepid canine companion. The attention did help diminish Hallie’s loneliness—my dad had been her heart person. To complicate Hallie’s emotions, recently she had suffered the loss of a Border Collie friend when he found a new
home. We all worked hard to lift her spirits. “But you still can’t have any ice cream,” I told her.
She sighed.
“That’s an extraordinary dog,” Lailah said.
I nodded. Hallie had kept me from bleeding to death after a car crash, almost died trying to rescue me from drowning, stared down a demon puppy from Hell, fought off monsters, and helped to save the world. Extraordinary indeed.
“The elbow is the strongest part of the body,” Lailah said. “If you’re close enough to use it in a fight, don’t hesitate.”
No rest for the weary, I thought.
“Is all this hand-to-hand combat going to protect us from demons?” Raven asked her.
“When demons take physical form they’re subject to most physical laws, although they are stronger than humans. Fighting can distract them so you can subdue with holy water, or bind their powers with salt, iron, or blessed objects.” Lailah paused. “You also have to be ready to protect yourself from humans. The New World Order has nefarious plans for the human race. Worse than the pandemic.”
That bit of news snapped me right to attention. “What are they going to do next?”
Both Lailah and Sasha slowly shook their heads in what I had come to recognize as the universal angelic “not allowed to tell you” gesture.
“My baby has a role in that, doesn’t she?”
More head shaking.
I had always thought that angels were messengers of God. I guess this band of angels hadn’t read the same guidebook. They were assigned to protect me, but they couldn’t interfere with my free will or human events. Angels were overrated. “The scientists of the NWO down in Arizona, do they know about Gen?”
Sasha looked at Lailah, and the elder angel said, “That’s something we don’t know. If the demons are aware of her, it’s possible the scientists are, too. They’re allies.”
“Great. Just great.” I thought about the fact that the seemingly omniscient Caretakers had arranged some serious interspecies social networking during the pandemic. They were the ones who assigned Dominic, Zane, and Kaia to be my bodyguards. Maybe they could reconnect me with my old teacher. “Could you please ask the Caretakers to help me find Professor Greenberg? He’s with the good scientists who are working against the NWO.”
Genesis (The Legend of Glory Book 3) Page 5