by Kristie Cook
“Brock Richard Verdor,” Hope said with that tone mothers get when they’ve lost patience with their children. She moved until she was toe-to-toe with him and glared up into his face. “Listen to me. Do you remember what I told you as a child? That there would be times when you must listen to me and obey, no matter what?”
Their gazes locked at this cryptic question, and then Brock cocked his head and nodded. “I remember.”
Hope glanced over her shoulder at me, up at the darkening sky with more clouds churning overhead, and then at him. “This is one of those times. Go with Asia. Don’t look back, no matter what.”
“What about Connor?”
“I’ll take him home in your car. The car seat’s already in it. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of him.” Her hand remained open, and Brock finally dropped the keys into it. “Now go! Don’t waste time, or it’ll be too late for both of you!”
Brock dropped a kiss on Connor’s forehead and another on his mom’s who quickly embraced him with one arm before pushing him away. He sauntered slowly toward me, his expression a mask of uncertainty. When Hope turned for Brock’s car, I saw her face for the first time. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
What the hell was going on? What had she been trying to tell him? She seemed to know something about our situation.
As she opened the rear door of Brock’s car, she looked over at me and gave me a small, sad smile. Then she ducked down to strap Connor into his car seat.
“What’s going on?” Brock asked as he stood on the opposite side of Hope’s car.
My gaze swung to his face. Mixed emotions crossed over his features. I thought I saw a momentary hint of love in his eyes, but mostly confusion and impatience. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be with me.
“I’m … I’m so sorry,” I whispered as I held my arm over the roof of Hope’s car. “I didn’t do anything, I swear. It just happened.”
Brock’s eyes slid down to inspect my arm, and then about bugged out of his head. He lifted his own arm up and pushed back the long sleeve covering it before laying it over the roof. A flame showed on his skin, too.
“It showed up today while I was in the Registrar’s office, arguing with them about my status.”
Our eyes locked for a long moment.
“What the hell, Brock? Did you forget about me? I had to walk all the way here from the mechanic’s!”
Our lock broke at the sound of Kami’s voice.
“Shit,” Brock muttered under his breath before turning toward her.
Stopping in front of his car, she glared at me and then at him. She tilted her head, jutted a leg out, and placed her hands on her hips.
“You promised,” she snapped with narrowed eyes.
“I … I—” Brock stammered.
Hope stepped in. “Kami, come with me. They have some things to discuss.”
Kami’s gaze swung to the older woman. “The hell they do!”
“Don’t make a scene, honey,” Hope warned. “Everything will make sense soon. I promise. Just get in the car. We’ll meet them at home.”
She’d walked over to Kami by then and wrapped her hand around the girl’s elbow. She guided her toward the passenger side of Brock’s car. If Kami could shoot flames out of her eyes, I’d be burning to a crisp. Thankfully, Connor began fussing, and Kami turned her attention inside the car, and climbed into the front seat.
My knees buckled with relief that we weren’t going to have a scene here. I dropped into the passenger seat of Hope’s car. Brock already sat next to me where his mother had been sitting only moments ago. He’d chosen me over Kami.
“What’s it mean?” he demanded. “The marks?”
Well, he chose curiosity and weird shit over Kami.
“It has to do with this book,” I said, grabbing the journal from the floor in front of me and placing it onto my lap. “Our names showed up in it and then disappeared.”
“What the fu—?”
A horn blared outside. Hope looked over the seats at us with reverse lights glowing white. Brock turned the engine over and backed up so she could move out of the parking spot. While we followed her toward the exit of the lot, I explained everything I knew to Brock. I turned the pages of the book to the drawing of the mansion while we waited behind a short line of cars at the stop sign.
“I’ve been dreaming of this place,” Brock murmured as he studied it. “I felt like I’d seen it before, but had forgotten it had been in this book.”
“What happens in your dreams?”
“We’re trying to get there. You and me.”
His hand slid from the gearshift to rest on top of mine. Hope was next in line to exit, and he pulled up behind her. Once the car came to a complete stop, Brock looked over at me. He gave my hand a squeeze, then removed it and turned to watch the traffic.
“Why’s that car going so damn fast?”
As I swung my gaze around to see what he saw, I watched Hope pull the Audi out of the parking lot. My arc continued to the left, where a light-colored truck was barreling down the street at breakneck speed. My heart stopped in my chest.
“NOOOOOO!” I shrieked.
“STOOOOPPPP!” Brock yelled.
Our shouts were drowned out by the sound of tires screeching on asphalt, metal crunching into metal, and glass shattering as the truck plowed into the side of Brock’s car. The driver’s side. Where both Hope and Connor had been sitting. Flames erupted immediately, engulfing both vehicles.
Brock’s screams filled my head, melding into a heart-wrenching harmony with my own.
Chapter 18
“No, God, no! Connor,” Brock wailed, his cries bouncing off the frozen walls as we all returned to the present.
My eyes and face hurt, and I pressed my hands against my cheeks. A sheet of ice layered my skin, my tears frozen solid. Sobs wracked through me, shaking me harder than the cold did. Poor Brock. Poor Asia. Poor Hope and Connor. Poor Kami, too, who may have been a bitch, but hadn’t deserved to die like that. I wrapped my arms around Brock as best as I could. His body had curled into the fetal position as he continued to cry out his baby boy’s name.
“I’m so sorry, Brock.” I cried with him. Bex draped herself over us, and her body shook as she sobbed, too.
“He’s gone,” he wept. “My son is gone. He was just a little baby.”
“It’s a terrible thing, losing a child, isn’t it?” Enyxa asked.
I hadn’t realized she remained in the cavern with us.
Brock’s body fell still underneath us. His sobs ceased. He pushed us off of him and rose to his feet. As Bex and I sat on our butts with Hayden, Brock strode over to stand right in front of Enyxa, where she sat on a boulder, one leg crossed over the other. He jabbed a finger in her face.
“Don’t act like you know anything.”
She let out a sound that was something between a laugh and a sigh. She shook her head. “Oh, Broderick, I know exactly how you feel. Time to share some of my story. How I went Dark.”
She rose to her feet and sauntered around the cavern slowly as she began, her stiletto-heeled boots clicking on the ice.
“Believe it or not, eons ago I was like you lot. Satan had Separated me from my Twin Flame.”
“Satan?” Bex gasped. “He’s still real?”
Enyxa threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, yes, darling, very real. Not every world calls him Satan, but that’s what you know him as. If you could remember everything, you’d remember that you’ve all met him, too.”
Bex shivered next to me, and I didn’t think this time was due to the cold.
“He ripped our soul in two and sent me back to Earth on my own, just as I did to all of you and the rest of the Original Seven many times since then.” She looked over at us as she continued her tr
ek around the cavern, dragging her fingernail along the icy wall. “Oh, yes, more than once, to all of you. But I get ahead of myself. We’re talking about me right now. Satan took my other half, and sent me to Earth alone. I was still of the Light at first. Once our souls had gone through the many life cycles and experienced everything we needed to, we’d become a Union, just like you lot had been. We’d been solidly in the Light for millennia. The Light remained strong in my soul. For a while …”
Her voice trailed off momentarily. Brock stood where he’d been, his arms crossed over his broad chest, watching her with the same mesmerized attention as the rest of us.
“My lives were hell, though. Not literal Hell. That came later. But they were horrible. Lifetime after lifetime of an empty feeling inside—the loss of my other half. I kept making the same stupid mistakes over and over of believing that I’d found him, but instead finding myself in a relationship with a man who didn’t love me. Some even hated me, or worse, didn’t care about me at all. Some beat me black and blue, leaving me in puddles of blood. Raped me, sometimes every night. Murdered me.”
Enyxa’s voice came cold as she stood right behind us, her Darkness waving over us, into us. Next to me, Bex scooted closer to Hayden, who wrapped his arms around her. I reached out and took her hand in mine, giving it a squeeze.
“Life after life of men who treated me like the scum on the soles of their feet. Life after life of watching my parents die, living as an orphan, or worse, with people who said they’d take care of me but only abused me and treated me like a slave.”
A tingle ran down my spine, and I stiffened. Maybe I was only imagining it, but I swore Enyxa herself ran that fingernail of hers down my back. I was too scared to look over my shoulder to find out.
She moved on, rounding her way back to Brock until she stood in front of him. “Life after life of watching my own children die in my arms. Sometimes from disease, others from accidents. Many times by burning to death.” She leaned closer to him, her eyes sparking as she recalled the memories. “Over and over again, I smelled their flesh frying. Heard their screams for me. Tried in vain to save them. Over and over again, I watched the life leave their innocent eyes, their tiny bodies fall limp or burn into ash. Hundreds of them.” She pushed a finger into Brock’s chest. “Yes, Broderick, I have real knowledge what it feels like to lose a child.”
He staggered backwards, closer to us. Enyxa turned to face us all.
“It was enough to make anyone go Dark, even someone as Light as I’d once been. But not enough to satisfy Satan. When I finally succumbed, he had to make it worse. Make me relive every horrible moment from the time he Separated us and throughout every miserable lifetime. As Light as I’d been, it had taken hundreds of lifetimes to get there, and he forced me to go through them all on repeat. Until I finally gave in to him. Until I accepted his offer to serve with him, as his equal, and accepted a piece of him into my soul. He rewarded me with some of his Darker worlds. I’ve taken others. Just as I’ll be taking Earth once you lot go Dark.”
“You’ve done this to us!” Brock accused. “You caused these tragedies in all of our lives, haven’t you?”
Enyxa laughed. “Yes, I have, but not completely on my own. You’ll learn that later. And before you ask, yes, I’ll be making you relive Every. Single. One. Of those tragedies. Every last agonizing moment. You think this life has been bad? Wait until you recall all of your past lives. You think losing your child this time is unspeakable? Wait until you remember all of the children you’ve lost in your many lives, Broderick. Wait until you, Nathayden, relive all the pain you’ve caused in others’ lives, including Rebethannah’s. Wait until you, Rebethannah, recall all the times you’ve been beaten, abused, and raped because you’d denied Nathayden’s love for the attention of other men.” Enyxa turned the full force of her gaze on me, and her mouth stretched into a wide grin. “And you, Jacquelena. Oh, the memories you’ll recall … but the best one of all will destroy you. All of you. You will be mine, soon. I’ll wait as long as it takes, because this will be so much fun.”
Enyxa sauntered over to the mouth of the cave as the sounds of the accident bounced around the cavern and Brock’s memory returned to all of us. An image of the accident and the cars exploding into flames showed in front of us. Brock fell to his knees, weeping again.
“By the way, Broderick,” Enyxa said as she stood just outside the cave. I couldn’t imagine how he could hear her over the feral sounds he made. “You should have never trusted Hope and her surreptitious ways, especially that night. One of your many mistakes. But it worked out perfectly for me … just as I’d hoped.”
She let out a wicked laugh, as though she’d told a hilarious joke. No, not a joke. A pun.
I narrowed my eyes. “Hope’s someone, isn’t she? Someone to the Guardians? Or to you?”
Enyxa’s dark eyes twinkled. “Oh, she’s someone all right. Well, she was. Sadly—or not—now there is no Hope.”
She stepped backwards, her foot finding no ice to land on, and she disappeared into the darkness, her laughter carrying on the air. I scrambled and slid on my hands and knees, barely able to stop the skid over the ice in time before I fell off the ledge myself. For as far as I could see, darkness stretched and the ice glowed blue far down below us. We were at least a hundred feet up, on the side of a cliff. Unfortunately, Enyxa’s body didn’t lay splayed out on the ground. Her existence wouldn’t end so easily.
I crawled and skidded back over to Brock and tried to hug him. He shrugged me off.
“Just leave me alone,” he muttered, his voice hoarse. He sat on his butt, his knees pulled to his chest, and his arms wrapped around his shins.
“You can’t let her win,” I said. “I can’t give you Asia’s love, but I can give you friendship. You need it, Brock.”
“It’s too late for me. My son, his mother, my mother … they all died, Leni!” He shook his head as fresh tears rolled over the rims of his eyes. “Mom … God, I don’t even know what to think of her now. If she’s even my mom after what Enyxa just said.”
“Don’t listen to Enyxa. I’m beginning to think she’s full of lies.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think she’s lied to us at all, and what she said makes sense. Hope was burning to death, but hell-bent on telling us what to do. Why were there flames in the first place? Those cars should have never burst into fire! But somehow they did, and she was in the middle of the flames, screaming at us, yelling at us to go west, to the manor. She wanted me to leave her and my crying son! Why? Why was that so important at that time? Maybe we could have done something for them, but she was more concerned about us getting away. I fought it at first, but Asia was convinced—or maybe fooled is the better word—and eventually dragged me away.”
“You needed to Forge,” I reminded him.
He looked up at me with narrowed dark eyes sparking with anger. “Did we? Did we really, Asia and me?” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to fucking believe any more. Who to believe.” He pressed the heel of his palm against his forehead, his fingers pushing his dark hair straight up. “I don’t deserve someone as great as Asia. I deserved Kami. If you want to say the universe was bringing two souls together, it was Kami and me. The universe worked against Asia and me. You know our story now. How can you say it’s anything like yours and Jeric’s?”
I opened my mouth, but I didn’t have an answer for him.
“You can’t,” he snarled. His voice came out quieter, the anger deflating. “We’ve always known we were different. Maybe now I know why.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone was forcing it. Maybe it was us, wanting to be together even though we shouldn’t have been. Maybe, though, it was Hope or Enyxa … or both, working together so we’d end up like this.” He blew out a heavy sigh. “It doesn’t matter, though. I’ve lost them all anyway, and I can’t fight
it any more. I can’t take Enyxa putting me through that one more time. The first time was enough. I’m done, Leni. Done with all of it.”
He bent his head into his knees and rocked himself, shutting me out.
Enyxa wasn’t done with us, though. More memories assaulted me, starting with Jeric’s accident that smashed his family between two vehicles and threw him into the ditch, leaving him deaf and an orphan. Then she took me back into Micah’s life, and I watched as his Marine brothers were shot down. She took me through the varied forms of Jacquelena, starting with Jacey and how she’d died by Micah’s side. The murder of that version of Bex, Pops’ death and the funeral, back through all the issues Jacey had and the pain she survived, including the fire that killed her parents. Then we went to the previous lifetime, when Jeric and I were Ja’mai, a Union soul, and the agonizing moment when Enyxa Separated us. Then before, reliving all of the tragedies and horrors of our times.
Rebethannah and Nathayden, and Broderick and Anastasia were always present in the memories. Other couples, too, whom I couldn’t identify now, but I wondered if they’d been part of the Sacred Seven—the Original Seven, as Enyxa had said. Amongst us all, we experienced the loss of parents, siblings at young ages, our own children, and each other. At least one of us was abused, raped, or murdered, or all three in each life cycle. We lost dear friends. We hurt other people. Other people harmed us. We even went back to another life, another world, another time when we’d been Ja’mai. Another agonizing Separation by Enyxa.
As she promised, we relived all of the bad times, experienced the pain—ours and others’—all over again. When I came out of it, my soul was so Dark and empty, the cold of this world became unnoticeable. I saw past Bex and Hayden, whose bodies were intertwined. I imagined their souls were, too, Bonding to help each other survive the horrors. Brock and I didn’t have that luxury.