by Jayde Brooks
Molly had tried to stay strong for herself, and especially for Jarrod, just like he’d been trying to hide how worried he really was for her. But his eyes gave him away. They always did.
Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!
Those three words drummed in the back of her head constantly, reminding her of how big of an idiot she’d been going into that shed by herself. She’d lasted as long as she had by not taking risks bigger than she needed to, but that day she must’ve thought she was Eden or something. She went beyond the call of duty, and it had cost her.
After fighting back the last dry heave, Molly pushed back away from the toilet and leaned back against the wall, cradling her swollen hand in her lap. She was dying. At least, she hoped she was dying. Turning into a vamp that lived off blood would be worse. That shit was just sick.
“Let it go, Mol,” she muttered, frustrated, raking her hands through her hair.
She’d been fucking believing in those damn horror movies since the world fell apart and she’d found out that the bogeyman was real. Molly searched them for answers in situations where there were no answers. She was in love with a gotdamned werewolf, or whatever, for crying out loud. And he was nothing like Taylor Lautner or Benicio del Toro. The legends were glamorous compared to the real thing. It was the legends, believing in them that she’d clung to, hoping to find some semblance of truth behind them, some remedy to the ills of everything going on around them.
A lifetime with Jarrod was an amazing fantasy. He’d warned her not to fight and to be careful when she did, but the problem was, Molly had gotten good at fighting. And because of that, her ego had grown to enormous proportions. She relished being a badass, a savior, a leader. Fighting for something, someone, had become her purpose. She fought to feed the belief that all of this chaos could end someday and that happy endings were real. She fought to save that one life that would find a way to fix this mess, bring people back to their senses, and lead society back to normalcy. It was way past time for her to grow up.
She had loved him at first sight. Jarrod was the first guy she’d ever seen wear a man bun and make it look gangsta. Those broad shoulders of his could easily fill a doorway, even when he wasn’t transformed into the beast. But it was his eyes that got her. Amber, and when he turned, they did too, into a rich golden honeyed hue. He teased her about being so young. Molly was only twenty-three to his four thousand plus years, but she’d always been into older guys. He’d laughed when she told him that.
Losing him was going to be worse than losing her life. Of course, they were both one and the same. She had no idea what to expect in the afterlife, but she was sure that she was going to miss him. The impact of him on her was eternal. She was sure it would transcend dimensions, sort of like Eden and Prophet, and she’d made it up in her mind that if there was any possible way for her to get back to him, she’d find it. In fact, she’d planned on haunting him until she did, especially if it looked like he might be getting too close to another woman. She’d haunt the hell out of his ass.
She had no idea that she was even crying until Jarrod appeared in the doorway.
“Baby?” he asked, concerned, coming over and kneeling down next to her.
She loved it when he called her that, and she fell sobbing into his arms. “I love you so much . . .” Her voice trailed off. She clung to him as if her life depended on him, and it did.
He wrapped both of his strong arms around her. “I got you, baby. I’m not gonna let—I’m not—”
She held him tighter.
“I love you too, Red,” he said, kissing the side of her neck. “You have no idea.”
She had no idea how long the two of them stayed sitting on that bathroom floor. He rocked her, slowly. His warm breath caressed her skin, the steady beating of his heart eased her fears. He was so strong, so beautiful, and perfect.
“Molly!”
All of a sudden she was airborne. She slammed hard against the ceramic tile wall behind the bathtub.
Blood! He was bleeding.
“Wha—?” Molly stared at him in disbelief and awe. The taste. She licked her lips, swiped her fingers across her mouth, pulled them away, and saw that they were covered in blood too.
Jarrod had already started to shift. Fear shot through her like lightning. He would kill her. His kind would tear her apart.
She hunched her shoulders and hissed. Jarrod glowered at her and blocked her path to the only way out. She licked her lips again, and moaned. It tasted—she’d been so sick, but it made her feel better. No.
She moved. It seemed slight at first, almost like a twitch, but suddenly she was looking down on him from the ceiling.
“Oh God,” she said, breathless.
Jarrod raised one long arm above his head, grabbed a handful of her tee-shirt, and yanked her down to the floor. Molly landed on her back with such force that she cracked the tile underneath her.
“Jarrod,” she whimpered, staring up at him with confused, fear-filled eyes. “Please,” she murmured.
He was going to kill her. His massive chest heaved as he sucked in air. Molly couldn’t move. She didn’t dare move or he’d crush her. She stared in horror as he finished his transformation. His body was almost too big for that room. His head bumped against the ceiling, forcing him to bend closer to her. Molly’s whole body went rigid with terror as she stared up at long and thick fangs coming toward her.
Jarrod never would’ve hurt her, not even in his Were form. Her rational mind knew that, but this other part of her, this creature that she’d become, knew that he was about to tear into her and not let go until there was nothing left. Molly held her breath, squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself for the inevitable.
The pain of those fangs slowly driving into her was excruciating. The sensation of her skin giving way, of her bones breaking, sent shockwaves of agony through her entire body. She shook. She thrashed. She screamed until she couldn’t anymore. She just stopped, fixing her gaze on the wall across from her. It seemed impossible to be so aware of your own death, but she was strangely aware of hers. The last thing she heard was him, crying and whispering her name.
“Molly. Damnit Red. Damnit.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
“Your rage is powerful magic indeed, Mkombozi,” Andromeda said, suddenly appearing in the apartment that Isis and ENIG had arranged for the Ancient, “for it to have brought you all the way here.”
The warrior wasn’t the least bit startled by the Seer’s presence, and if she was, she hid it well. Andromeda had forgotten how breathtakingly beautiful Mkombozi had once been, and she had regained every last stitch of her beauty in her transport from Ara to here.
“I am not the magician, Seer,” she said, in her lovely Theian dialect. “You are.”
Andromeda walked over to the window and stared out at ruins of the city. “Magician? Me? No,” she scoffed. “I am just a nosy old Seer with too much time on her hands. That is all.”
“The tricks of you and my mother have cost me far too much, Andromeda,” Mkomobozi said, sounding surprisingly casual. “My life. My Beloved.”
“Your Omen,” Andromeda finished.
“Yes.”
The old language rolled off her tongue like sweets, and Andromeda savored the flavor of it. She turned back around to face Mkombozi. It was hard not to stare at the Ancient. If you looked up the word “Bam!” in the dictionary, you should see her picture, Andromeda thought, and chuckled at her own analogy.
“You find me amusing, Seer?” she asked insulted.
“No. I find me amusing. I find you enviably beautiful as always, Mkombozi.”
Mkombozi studied her. “Do not think for one moment that your compliments hide your cunning from me. You and Khale, along with your reborn, have woven such a spell, one so callous and deceptive that it not only fooled my Beloved, but the Omen as well.”
Andromeda furrowed her brow in deep thought. “Your faith in me is flattering, Mkombozi, if you truly believe that I am capable of deceiving the Omen.
The Guardian, yes. I could easily deceive him. He likes to think he is smarter than he actually is.” She smiled. “He is lovely to look at, though.”
“What do you want?”
Andromeda saw the opportunity to lie but quickly decided that it was not worth the effort. “I want to see how this all ends. I do not want to miss a moment of it.”
“You are a seer. Should you not know how it ends even before we do?”
“I see most things, Mkombozi,” Andromeda earnestly explained, “but not all. For instance, I did not see the Reborn living beyond killing the Demon after she’d made the final bond. I had expected her end to be as yours was.”
Mkombozi visibly winced. “Khale gave me my end prematurely,” she countered.
Andromeda shook her head. “Not in my opinion.”
“Your opinion means nothing to me.”
“Of course it does not. Still, you did not last as long in the possession of the Omen as this one has. I wonder why?”
Beauty like Mkombozi’s was deceptive. A being could take one look at her and forget what she was capable of. Or he could fall in love, and offer up his oath to her.
“Do you mean to imply that she is somehow more powerful than I am?”
“Is that the inference you take from my question?” Andromeda probed.
“Trust me,” Mkombozi responded, smirking. “She is not.”
“Then she must be lucky.”
Mkombozi looked confused. “Lucky. What is this lucky?” she asked in Theian, using the English word “lucky”.
“Forgive me. She must be more fortunate than you.”
From the expression on her face, Mkombozi didn’t like that response either.
“Unless you are a liar, the Omen were made for me and only me. Is that not what the prophecy says? Is that not what you told my mother and me?”
“According to you, I am not to be trusted, and those who cannot be trusted must be liars.”
Mkombozi smiled. “You try so hard to be complicated, Seer. You insist on making yourself to appear more important than you are.”
“Yes. That is very true,” she humbly responded.
“They belong to me. They always have and they always will.”
“But to what end, Ancient? To what purpose?”
“To an end and a purpose that is none of your business, troll.”
Had he truly chosen this one? The very thought weighed down on Andromeda like lead. She had fallen in love with the love between the Guardian and the courageous, resilient, pretty little human. But this one was so captivating, alluring, and lovely. She was everything he’d loved and lost when Theia fell. In her was the remedy to all the sadness and heartache he’d suffered for all these many millennia.
“Why do you stare at me so?” Mkombozi asked, stalking a slow and threatening circle around Andromeda.
The Ancient towered over Andromeda, statuesque and shapely. Khale had been beautiful, but Mkombozi’s mannerisms, her confidence and gait, were so reminiscent of her father, Sakarabru.
“You underestimate her,” Andromeda told her.
Mkombozi stopped dangerously close behind her. “I am no fool, Seer. She has my Omen. Once she learns to properly wield them, not even I can stop her.”
“True,” she responded, unmoved by the subtle threat. “But I like her better than I like you.”
Mkombozi laughed. “Good. Let her deal with the burden of your affection. It is toxic.”
“Is it true that the Guardian has chosen you over her?”
Andromeda had seen the two of them together. She had watched him enveloped in sadness as he had kissed Mkombozi.
“He has,” she assured her.
“Then he is a disappointment,” she said sadly. “I expected so much more from him.”
Naturally, Mkombozi was again insulted. Her pinched expression pretty much shouted, “Taikou!” to Andromeda in Theian, a word most closely related to the English phrase “fuck you”. Her words were more measured.
Andromeda winced.
“You should not be surprised,” she said. “He chose me before I was old enough to even speak. I am the one he swore his oath to. I am the one who owns it. Even if he wanted to deny me, he could not.” She stepped back. “Your little impostor is an echo of me at best. I will credit her with courage for bonding the Omen and with some measure of blind fortune for surviving those bonds. However, she can never wield them as I can.”
“She has done better for longer.”
“Khale turned on me. You both did. She cast her spell so quickly that I never had time to adjust to the final bond. But the two of you had planned my demise even before I was born. You never intended for me to survive beyond killing the Demon. She is not a prodigy. She is not exceptional. She is, as you say, lucky. But that is all.”
Andromeda wondered how Tukufu could have so brazenly risked his own life to save Eden’s and now, so easily and without hesitation, betrayed her with this Ancient? That oath of his was as much a detriment as a benefit.
“No. That is not all, Mkombozi. I know that you do not see it yet, but perhaps, before this ends, you will.”
Even in her sleep she cried. Andromeda stood over Eden, watching her quietly whimpering as she slept, curled into a small ball and looking more like a little girl than the threat of the world. The Omen tortured her. Love had betrayed her. She had to have known it. Eden had to have felt that something about Prophet had changed. Andromeda had known love thousands of times over the course of her lifetime, and she always knew when her lover had had a change of heart. Andromeda marveled at the fact that Eden was still holding onto herself. But for what reason? For how long?
What they’d done to her, Khale, and Andromeda, from the moment she was born, had been cruel. Even Rose, Eden’s Rose, the woman who had raised her, had done her a disservice by resurrecting that ancient spirit into that stillborn baby. That little girl had died at birth. She should’ve been allowed to stay dead. She deserved to rest now. Eden owed the world nothing.
Andromeda lowered her lips to Eden’s cheek and kissed it softly. Softly enough to not awaken her. To nurture had always been a foreign concept to the Seer. Again, another relevant or irrelevant concept left to those who stood still long enough to ponder such things. She wasn’t sure if what she felt for this one was love, or just a quiet admiration and appreciation of her existence.
“Thank you, young one,” she whispered, fading away. She disappeared entirely seconds before Eden opened her eyes.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Jarrod had sent word to Eden that Molly was ill, but that’s all his Were brother would tell her. Three hours later, Eden and Prophet are at Jarrod’s front door.
“Jarrod!” she yelled, hurrying inside the house.
Moments later he came down the stairs. “I’m here,” he said anxiously.
“Molly? Is she all right?”
His red-rimmed eyes told her that she wasn’t.
Tears immediately filled her eyes too. “Jarrod? God, no.” Eden shook her head and backed away from him. “Please. No.”
Not her. Not Molly.
“She’s not—” He took a pensive step toward her, but then stopped. “She’s not dead, Eden. Not yet.”
Without thinking, Eden ran to him, wrapped her arms around him, and held him as tightly as she could. “Let me see her,” she demanded. “Jarrod. Please. Let me see her.”
“Did she turn?” Prophet asked.
Rumors had been circulating about some humans being bitten by vamps actually turning into them. Not all humans. Most died when bitten. But a few actually transformed. Eden had told him that Molly had been bitten the night they’d arrived in Morgantown before the fighting started.
Reluctantly, after peeling Eden off of him, Jarrod led them both upstairs to their bedroom. Eden stopped just inside the doorway and held her breath. Molly looked like a corpse, her skin a sickly gray, dotted with dark bruises. Her vibrant head of thick, red hair had lost its natural hue and had changed to a
dirty brown color. She was thin, too thin. Eden turned to Jarrod and stared at him in confusion.
“She’s alive,” he assured her again. “But barely.”
Dark circles cradled his eyes. Jarrod looked as if he were losing his own life force as Molly lost hers. Eden hesitantly approached her friend and softly sat down on the side of the bed, noticing that the arm nearest her was heavily bandaged. Eden leaned close to Molly and lightly stroked her hair.
“Hey, Mol,” she said, shakily. “Girl, it’s E. I’m gonna need for you to wake up and talk to me.” While she waited, a single tear fell from Eden’s eye onto the bed next to Molly. “You need to let me know that you’re okay. You need to tell me that?” she choked back a sob.
“Runyon.” Prophet stopped him at the door. “What the hell happened? Did she turn?”
“She was, uh . . .” Runyon swallowed. “I don’t know. I just . . .”
“I think you need a rabies shot,” Eden joked, knowing that Molly had a sick enough sense of humor to appreciate it. “I get it. Jarrod wasn’t giving you enough attention. But he’s giving you everything now. So, you need to get better.” She waited for Molly to move or blink her eyes, before turning to Jarrod. “How long has she been like this?”
“A day,” he said nervously. “She was starting to turn. She even bit me.”
Eden could hardly believe it. “She bit you?”
“Drew blood. I don’t think she realized what she’d done.”
“She’s a vamp, then?” Prophet asked. “You did this to her?”
Jarrod shrugged. “I had to,” he reluctantly admitted. “I didn’t know what else—”
“What’d you do, Jarrod?” Eden asked, standing up. Anger swelled in her veins as she approached him.