Genesis (The Legend of Glory Book 3)

by Devin O'Branagan

  I rolled down the window and struggled to fill my lungs. It was a while before I regained a measure of control.

  Glancing at Jinx, I noticed the cold look on her face. She had been strangely silent during the trip thus far.

  “Thank you for your help,” I said.

  “I didn’t do it for you.”

  That threw me. “Okay.”

  She looked at my belly. “I did it for Zane’s baby.”

  I hadn’t realized she knew Gen was Zane’s. “Does he know now, too?”

  “Apparently not.”

  I nodded. “The Caretakers wanted it that way.”

  “Are you aware that Zane’s undergoing the cure for vampirism right now?”

  “It works? My mom figured it out?”

  “No one knows if it works.” She looked at my belly again. “If it does, which of your two men do you love more?”

  “Oh, Jinx, it’s so complicated. Nicky owns my heart, but Zane possesses my soul.” I thought about how to word it. “I feel totally safe with Nicky. Not with Zane though. With him, I feel like I’m going to explode. Like I can’t breathe. Like the sky will come falling down. Like anything can and will happen.”

  Jinx’s narrowed eyes spit fire at me. “I have the same reaction to him.”

  Her attitude threw me. “I don’t get your hostility. When we met, you told me that you knew Zane was in love with me. You were okay with that.”

  “That was before the time travel.” She slapped the steering wheel. “You gave him to me in eighteen eighty-two. You didn’t want him to be alone, and I made sure he wasn’t. You gave us your blessing. It changed our relationship. Instead of being friends-with-benefits for twenty years, we were together as a couple for most of a hundred and thirty. That changed everything. You gave him to me. You can’t just take him back.” Her voice broke, and a bloody tear ran down her face.

  I had never thought about the implications of the changed timeline before. It simply never occurred to me.

  “This is the end of the road for me, Glory. I can’t be a part of your posse anymore. We’re in enemy camps now. May the better woman win.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  † † †

  Zane’s battle didn’t end with the transformation from vampire to human. The final stage—in many ways the hardest—was coming to grips with being human again. He spent the day on the balcony off White Bear’s guest room, trying to relearn what it meant to be a man.

  Senses, now hobbled, felt like a horse no longer able to run.

  Relatively, his strength had diminished from that of a stallion to a newborn foal. Sitting in the sun too long, his body overheated. In the shade, he shivered. The thin line that man walked between life and death had never seemed so fragile. He didn’t remember ever feeling this vulnerable. Now that he knew what was possible, the human body seemed insignificant in the grand scheme. What had he given up?

  He fought panic.

  As the hours slowly passed, words Kate had spoken during his time of dying and rebirth returned to his mind.

  “Your body is woven

  from the light of Heaven.”

  It seemed that a vampire’s body belonged to Earth: wild, strong, free. The human body was of Heaven: filled with light, but fragile like an egg. Zane thought of all the bird eggs he had witnessed hatching over the decades and understood that new life really began when the force growing inside each egg eventually broke free of its shell. So, he realized, it was with being human. The soul lived in a fragile house, relying on an inner force to evolve to the point where it could fly. That inner force so intimately connected to Heaven’s light was the loss he had mourned while a vampire. Now, he sensed its return and understood that it would be his new strength.

  † † †

  That evening White Bear fixed Zane a light stew and a batch of flatbreads to eat. His body had to accustom itself to receiving nourishment the old-fashioned way. It was a struggle.

  “I need to find out if Evan received the Wonderland files Ruby transmitted to him,” Kate said. “I don’t want to reach out to him directly. Would Kaia know?”

  White Bear shrugged. “Kaia’s been out of touch, but I’ll track her down and ask her to find out for us. I need to find her soon for my own reasons. The spirits have given me warnings about her safety and for some reason my mind can’t locate her.”

  That worried Zane. She and Rory were traveling together. “You know that Kate and I aren’t going to be safe until Evan breaks the news about the NWO agenda. Kate should stay here until then.”

  Kate gave him a surprised look. “You too, of course.”

  “I’ve got to offer the cure to my family and the Goth Girls. I gave my word I would. If I wait, so many things could go wrong and the opportunity lost.”

  “But if you’re going to administer the cure to others, I should go with you to oversee.”

  “It would be dangerous. Not only from the NWO, but from the vamps themselves. I’m expecting trouble.”

  Kate shook her head. “What kind of trouble? Either they’ll want the cure or they won’t.”

  Zane hadn’t yet told Kate about Joy. “There’s gonna be a problem with Jinx and the little girl she turned. I want to make the child human again, and Jinx is going to fight me on it.”

  Kate’s face paled. “Jinx turned a child? How old is she?”

  “Four.”

  “That’s awful. How could she do such a thing?”

  “Well ma’am, actually it was Glory’s idea.” He set down his spoon. “The little girl who drowned in the river last fall at the equinox celebration in Union?”

  “Belle Starr James?”

  “She died and couldn’t be resuscitated. Glory thought if Jinx could turn her, and if you were able to make a cure, then she’d have a chance to live again. Belle’s soul hadn’t left her body and so it was done. Jinx renamed her Joy and adopted her. Thing is, Jinx doesn’t want her changed back because she wants to keep her, well, forever. We butted heads over it, but I’m going to do what I think is best.”

  “You aren’t expecting a literal fight, are you?” Kate asked.

  Zane nodded. “It might well come to that.”

  “You couldn’t win. It’s the whole David and Goliath scenario.”

  “David won. Maybe I can too. If not, I just hope Jinx won’t kill me. She’s real emotional about the whole thing.”

  “Jinx won’t take the cure?”

  Zane shook his head. “Maybe I can still convince her, but she likes being a vamp. What worries me most is how hard the cure is, and Joy is such a little thing. Is there any way to smooth out the rough?”

  Kate sighed. “If we were in a hospital setting, and I had access to other drugs, and we had time to work with, yes. But not on the fly. Do you want to wait and see what happens in the future?”

  “The future has many possible roads,” White Bear said. “Will the shadow government be undone? Is the established government going to allow further use of this cure? Will you two even survive the weeks ahead?”

  Zane considered. “Is there a sedative of some sort maybe? I know the Goth Girls have herbs they use to make the switch from human to vampire easier. Anything like that for the flip side?”

  “I think with the violent vomiting, actual sedation would be dangerous.” Kate looked at White Bear. “Any ideas?”

  After a few moments, White Bear nodded. “I can come up with medicine that will help. The spirits can be merciful to the innocent.”

  † † †

  Kate gave Zane eight syringes filled with the cure. White Bear provided an elixir for Joy, his truck, a disposable cell phone, and a cooler full of food.

  “If I don’t survive Jinx and can’t make it back to Glory, tell her, tell her....” Zane lost his breath, and words failed him.

  “I know what to tell her,” Kate said, pulling him into a fierce embrace. “I have come to love you, Zane. You’re the son I never had. I want you to come home to us.”

  “I want t
o come home, ma’am. I want it so bad.”

  White Bear offered him a traditional blessing. “Go forward in courage. All of creation is related, and whatever we do affects everything in the universe. Hold on to what is good, to what you believe, and to what you must do. And when the dying time comes, sing your death song like a hero going home.”

  * * *

  The moment the Mustang pulled up to my house, Dominic was there to help me out of the car. I fell into his arms and wept. Oh, how I had missed him. I inhaled his familiar smell, I absorbed his comforting energy, I bathed in his goodness. However, I couldn’t bring myself to kiss him. I had a lot to process.

  When I avoided his lips, he looked into my eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “No.” Please don’t ask me what happened.

  “What can I do?”

  “Hold on tight and never let me go,” I said.

  “I’ll hold on as long as you want me to.”

  I wasn’t wearing shoes, so Dominic picked me up and carried me inside. He protected me from Hallie’s exuberant greeting, and then handed me off to Sasha’s eager arms. Finally, Lailah assessed me, touched my belly, and said, “Not many have the strength to survive Hell. You are indeed a light warrior.”

  I didn’t feel like any kind of warrior at all.

  It seemed like a stranger’s house. The disconnect was huge, like I had been gone for years.

  I was just settling in when the others arrived. Jinx collected Kaia from the BMW and carried her into the spare bedroom. Although there were no visible wounds, Kaia still had not recovered consciousness. Then Dominic relinquished Dad’s studio out back to Jinx and Jezebel, so Jinx could feed Jezebel blood and nurse her burns.

  Raven stomped in out of the cold and said to me, “I need to rest, then I’m outta here. But first you have to tell me what it is you think I did?”

  I met her angry eyes. “Right before Nyx and Jesse manifested, you said you were sorry. I figured since the wards must have been messed with, that you were apologizing for that.”

  Raven clenched her fists. “I said I was sorry because I felt guilty about just having laid my feelings for D on you. At that moment, it seemed such a selfish thing in the grand scheme.”

  Rory said, “I can read her like an open Book of Shadows. She’s telling the truth.”

  Regret filled me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Raven snorted. “Sorry doesn’t cut it.”

  “Don’t go. Please don’t go.” Panic chased the regret and I started to shake. Then came guilt about Raven, guilt about Jinx, guilt about Jesse, the storm cloud of terror I lived under all that time in Hell, the intense emotions for Jesse that had been unleashed, and fear about Jesse killing me before Gen was born.

  A flaming bolt of lightning struck, and I spun into an icy pit of darkness.

  * * *

  Fire and ice. I sensed it, and Jesse appeared.

  “You left me no choice, babe. I made that deal with Lucifer. Dad’s going to ride me right past your wards and we’re going to put you down.”

  * * *

  Disoriented, I woke up in bed surrounded by darkness. Lying by my side, he spooned me, his arm around me as usual, his leg casually thrown over mine. I reached down and touched his blue jeans. No. No. No. I thought I had escaped. Terror ripped through me. Had I gone mad? I screamed, twisted, and lashed out at him with my fists. “No, Jesse, no! Don’t!”

  He tried to hold on. “Glory, it’s me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The voice? That smell? Was it Nicky?

  He turned on the light and my eyes confirmed what my other senses told me.

  Even though my brain computed the facts, an unreasonable sense of panic seized me and I recoiled. “I can’t have a man in my bed right now. Not even you.”

  He reached out to touch me, but I slapped his hand away. “Don’t.”

  I watched a kaleidoscope of emotions cross his face: shock, understanding, compassion, anguish. I could feel his heart break for me. “I’ll get one of the girls.”

  He left, and a moment later there were voices outside the closed door.

  “I heard her scream,” Rory said.

  “Jesse hurt her. She needs your help.”

  Rory came in and sat by my side.

  Guilt returned. “I’m horrible. I told Nicky to hold on to me and then beat him up for doing just that.”

  “Tell me what Jesse did to you.”

  I couldn’t answer. I fought for breath and hyperventilated.

  Rory pushed me onto my back and cupped her hands over my nose and mouth. “Breathe deep.”

  It didn’t take long for my breath to return, but I still couldn’t talk.

  Rory laid her palm on top of my head. “Shhh. Show me.”

  I showed her. What Jesse had done. What I had done. What I did as a demon. Everything.

  As it unfolded, Rory reflected the horror back at me. She blanched, she gasped, she lost her own breath. It took a long time for her to witness all my shame. Finally, she removed her hand and nodded. “Okay.” Repositioning herself cross-legged on the bed, she took one of my hands. “Jesse violated you in a lot of ways. But tell me, sweetie, where is all that shame coming from? What did you actually do that was so bad?”

  I thought about it and tried to figure out a way to explain. “I surrendered.”

  “Did you? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seemed in control of your will and set clear boundaries. What you did in the alternate timeline doesn’t count.”

  So, my dream of being a demon had been real. I thought so. How was I supposed to come to terms with that? I took another shaky breath. “I let myself fall for Jesse.”

  “Didn’t you always love him? His demonic influence amplified your feelings and muddled your thoughts, but the feelings themselves were honest.”

  “I chose him over Zane and Nicky.”

  “Ah, that.” Rory stared into my eyes for a long time. Finally, she said, “You tried to make the best of an impossible situation and position yourself to help Genesis. And you thought you could help the man inside the demon. That’s all pretty amazing, really.”

  “Please don’t tell Nicky about any of it.”

  “Telling him ain’t my call, but of anyone in your life, he’s the one who could best help you deal.”

  I shook my head. I could never tell Nicky. He had been an angel. I gave myself to a demon. In another place, another time, I was a demon.

  “That’s how you feel now,” Rory said, “but down the road—”

  “There’s no road ahead for me, Rory! Jesse’s coming for me, and he’s bringing Lucifer with him.”

  After a moment, Rory said, “If that’s so, then we need to hold them off long enough for Genesis to get born. We have to keep the eye on the prize. She’s the one that matters.”

  “Yes.” That’s what I had needed to hear. To be reminded of the mission.

  )o( )o( )o(

  Rory texted White Bear, told him Kaia had been hurt, and asked him to come. He responded immediately that he was on his way. While waiting for him to arrive, her hands were full tending to all the wounded warriors.

  Jezebel’s burns healed fast, and the vamps wanted to go home. Rory went to Dominic’s house to ask Raven to drive them to the airport and found her packing.

  “So, you really are leaving?” Rory asked.

  “Verily.”

  “Can’t you just stow your crap and get on with the mission?” Rory really hated drama.

  Raven’s expression was incredulous. “My crap? Mine? It’s Glory who’s full of it.”

  “In your wildest drunken dreams you could never imagine what Glory’s been through, and she’s not going tell anyone because it’s too vile. I had to read her mind and I’m scarred for life. So, you got your feelings hurt? Get over yourself and do the job.”

  Raven kicked her suitcase across the room. Then she chased it down and kicked it again. Finally, she sank to the floor and buried her face in her hands. “This is the only fam
ily I have left. I care about them. That anyone would think I’d betray them....”

  “I never had family so don’t claim to understand all the emotional baggage that goes with it, but I think a big part of the package is hurting each other, forgiving, and then moving on. Glory is oozing remorse over this. Can’t you just let it go?”

  “I’d die for her. I’d die for any of them.”

  “Then slay your wounded ego. Your family needs you as much as you need them.”

  Raven unpacked and drove the Goth Girls to the airport.

  )o( )o( )o(

  Rory watched Glory work feverishly to build flashbangs out of materials found around the house and stockpile them on the kitchen table. Glory trudged through the snow and collected anything that could be used as a weapon from every barn, outbuilding, and junk pile she could access. She added it all to the growing kitchen table arsenal. Dominic and Sasha stayed by her side and tried to assist, but she seemed on a one-woman mission and pushed everyone away. Finally, Rory fell into step with her and said, “You can play General Glory all you want, but this is an army and you need to let the troops help.”

  Glory looked at her, but Rory could tell her mind was far away. “We need rosaries, and some holy water, and more warding.”

  “Then delegate, sweetie. Generals delegate.”

  Glory’s thoughts seemed to snap to attention. “Oh. Right. Okay. Dominic, you’re in charge of getting rosaries and holy water. Sasha, find Lailah and tell her she’s got to construct wards that will stop Lucifer.”

  “I don’t think there are wards strong enough to do that,” Sasha said.

  Glory’s voice grew harsh. “Just tell her to get it done. If they won’t stop him, then make them strong enough so he has to work for it ... for me. I won’t go gently into that Hellfire.”

  Dominic nodded. “We’ll get it done.”

  Glory stumbled and grabbed her belly. “Someone get that obstetrician, Dr. Walsh, over here to check little Gen out. Something’s not right.”