Evigheden

by S King

  She was shamelessly beautiful with the flame’s shadows dancing across her face. Like me she wasn’t listening to Karina’s fool proof plan or explanation of bomb making. She was simply lost in her own thoughts and her silence was speaking volumes on what was running through her mind.

  “Who wants drinks?” Dristan shot out of his chair and looked between me and Luminous.

  “I’ll take a beer.”

  “My dude,” Dristan nodded to me before turning to Luminous, “and the Silver Angel? What can I get you?”

  As if snapping herself from a memory, she looked up at him, “nothing, thanks.”

  “I know what to get her,” Karina said, leaving us to our own vices.

  “Be right back,” Dristan mumbled a little too quickly and followed Karina into my house.

  Luminous had returned her attention back to the flames of the fire and didn’t flinch as the cold breeze lifted the ends of her hair.

  “What’s wrong?” I couldn’t stop myself from asking the question even if I had wanted to. She looked too damn beautiful and a little too mysterious for my curious mind to ignore. Not to mention, I was interested in knowing what went on in her mind when I could.

  She smirked and glanced at me, “where are we going to go from here?”

  For a second, I was confused by her question. There was no doubt she was going to have a bounty on her head for as long as the courts were still active. But what about me? Thanks to my over willingness to interject myself in her life and problems, I was just as much a part of her nightmare as she was.

  Granted I did have a silver lining whether I liked it or not. I could regain the status I had spent a lifetime trying to build. In truth, the only thing hanging over my head right now was simple. I had killed Honor Guard members in the name of self-defense. However, I knew better than to make the assumption the courts would brush aside my involvement and had a lingering thought of just how much danger I was facing by being tied to Luminous in any way.

  “Well,” I cleared my throat and adjusted myself in the chair, “for the time being, we’ll dance in the flames that burned the bridges we refused to cross.”

  A soft laugh brightened her face, “how poetic of you, Mr. Losett. But I’m talking about with the judges and…” she waved a dismissive hand and looked out over the mountain’s edge. “Our orders; we’ve drug our friends into our fight and unfortunately,” she took a deep breath, turning her attention to me. “You and I are in this together, whether we want to be or not.”

  It took an act of God for me to sit there and not promise her I would protect her with my final breath. I couldn’t let her know about her destiny, not like this. Not now.

  “That’s true,” I finally nodded, hearing something in my house breaking. Rolling my eyes at Dristan and Karina’s carnal decisions, I rubbed my hands together and stared at Luminous through the flames.

  “Why don’t we train together then? You said it yourself, we’re in this together, might as well keep our stamina up.”

  She smiled and raked her nails through her hair, “believe it or not, I don’t feel like leaving any bruises on you right now, Demir.”

  Ok, she was seriously consumed with her haunted thoughts. I needed to do something to take her mind away from our reality. If only for a few minutes.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket and pressed play on the very song she had sworn was her favorite to Silver. Mary McBride’s soul-filled voice floated out of the speakers around my house while the jazz song started.

  Those slate gray eyes lifted to mine, shining with unshed tears as she searched my face. “How?”

  I smirked, tossing my phone in the chair and walked around the fire pit, with my hand out to her I whispered, “may I have this dance, Luminous River?”

  A single tear slipped from her eye as her hand slid into mine and she stood from the chair. We didn’t say anything; there was no reason to, death was around the corner for both of us. At least, for right now, I could find my solace in the fact I was not going to be killing her.

  As I led her across the patio, I realized something, I’d rather die than watch Luminous cry. Maybe it was the scientists genetic enhancements when it came to our DNA and biological make up. Maybe it was thanks to our tumultuous relationship.

  I didn’t know what caused the sudden shift; ok, sure, I had always found her too attractive for words, but the more I got to know her, the longer I stayed around her. I couldn’t deny the connection I felt with her. Whether it was the scientists or by my own choices, something told me we were on an ill-fated road and for the life of me, I couldn’t begin to talk myself out of walking down the path with her.

  “How did you know?” She asked, looking up at me.

  Smirking, I allowed her to spin away from me and pulled her back before I answered. “Being in a life-or-death situation where I don’t know my accomplice isn’t my type of thing.”

  “You did your research then?”

  “More or less,” I admitted.

  It wasn’t like I was going to tell her I had demanded Dristan break into Silver’s records and pull Luminous’s file after Jeffery decided to tell me the world’s biggest news flash.

  So, no, I wasn’t going to tell her I knew everything about her. I knew how she preferred to wear sweat pants to the jeans that hugged her in all of the right places. Or how she liked black and white movies and foreign series to anything on cable and satellite. Hell, I knew the woman’s bra size and it wasn’t because of our night at Nine Lives. But telling her all of her own details would only make me look like a stalker and wouldn’t that conversation be something to write home about?

  The song ended and smoothly transitioned to another favorite of hers, forcing her to raise a brow at me.

  “One would think you made a playlist for me, Mr. Losett.”

  “One could make that assumption, Miss. River.”

  Luminous smiled softly at me, “thank you Demir.”

  “For?” I twirled her again and rested my hand on the small of her back.

  Her eyes traced my face like I was going to disappear or—more than likely—she was trying to figure out what was with the change in my demeanor. Her left hand came up, her finger tracing my beard.

  Finally, she spoke, “keeping my mind away from the inevitable.”

  Leaning in I rested my forehead against hers, “you’re welcome.”

  “Can I tell you something?” She breathed the question and closed her eyes.

  “Go for it,” I didn’t know what was going to come from her mouth, but my heart was racing ninety to nothing with anticipation.

  She pulled back to look in my eyes, “if I told you I—”

  “Guys, we need to get out of here,” Dristan chose that exact moment to burst through the door looking panicked.

  If I didn’t take into account the look on his face, I would’ve ripped him a new asshole for interrupting my time with Luminous. We didn’t have time to play with as it were, so every second counted. At least, it did in my book.

  “Why?” I snapped.

  “Because your house is wired for sound and ready to go,” Karina hollered as she ran from the living room, snatching Luminous out of my arms.

  “What—” I didn’t get to finish asking the question because in an instant, Dristan speared me through the stomach as my house blew to shit.

  The fire pit went flying through the air, spraying embers everywhere along with crackling wood. I protected my head as shrapnel, furniture bits, glass and the rest of the structure came falling down around us. As my head was pressed into the snow, the only thing I could think of was Luminous several feet away from me. Was she ok? Was Karina ok?

  “Karina, Luminous, are you ok?” Dristan’s question was muffled in the snow but heard, nonetheless.

  Both women shouted back as another explosion rocked the ground. I didn’t know why I wanted to see what was happening to my house, but I did. Taking the chance, I lifted my head and looked at everyone. All were hunkered down
in the snow, giving me a chance to look over my shoulder.

  The living room, dining room and kitchen were gone thanks to the first blast. Followed by my bedroom and the guest rooms going up in their own ball of flames shortly after. Everything I had worked so hard for was now nothing more than ash and ruble. What had taken me years to build up, only took mere seconds to destroy. Just fucking perfect.

  “I think it’s done,” I said, shaking my head at the scene.

  Dristan popped up and dusted off the snow from his pants, “that was a close one.”

  “How did you even know there were bombs?”

  “You don’t want to know, Losett,” Karina said shaking the snow from her hair.

  Dristan looked at me from the corner of his eye, “you two need to get out of here now.”

  “And where are we supposed to go?” Luminous’s voice cut through the roaring flames and howling wind. “If they know where Demir lives, up here in the mountains then they know where I live too. Not to mention the two of you are at major risk just for defending the two of us.”

  Dristan and Karina fell silent, taking in her words. The guard was not going to allow me—or Luminous—to leave peacefully, if at all. Besides right now we had no other ideas of how to get away from the threat of our lives.

  “Maybe we need to separate,” Luminous blurted.

  The three of us stared at her like she’d lost her damn mind. Karina was the first to speak and thank fuck she did.

  “Lumi,” she pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment before glaring at her friend. “Tell me where you lost your damn mind so I can go find it.”

  “Rina, guys, listen,” she looked at us with a glint in her eye. “If we split up then maybe we can find—”

  “What? Our graves?” Dristan’s eyebrows popped into his hairline, “sorry, Lumi, I’m not in the business of dying today or any other time that I’m not supposed to.”

  She raised a brow and pursed her lips, “Dristan, we need to find the one who framed us,” she motioned between my chest and hers. “Along with—”

  “Are you forgetting you killed Holt and Sooter almost five days ago?” Karina asked sarcastically.

  “No.”

  “Then what makes you think you have a fighting chance of getting out of this alive? I mean, Lumi, if we’re all being honest here, the only one that has a chance for redemption, in this fucked up situation, is Demir.” Karina looked between the three of us, nailing Dristan and I with a hard stare to emphasize her point.

  Lumi fell silent and shifted her gaze to the burning house behind me.

  Karina took a deep breath and looked around, “ok, Demir take Lumi and get out of here. Dristan and I will go find out what we need to about the courts and guards.”

  “That’s virtually impossible,” I grumbled turning to look at my house. “They’re going to be scavenging the city for all of us.”

  “I need to get my whip,” Lumi ripped her fingers through her hair.

  “I need to go to my bunker,” I shrugged at Dristan’s screwed look, “if we’re going on the run, we need supplies.”

  “Why not just hide out in the bunker until the dust has settled?” Karina accused, pissed off because I hadn’t said anything sooner.

  “Because it’s not what you think, Karina.”

  Lumi stepped between us and held her hands out, “look, I’ll go with Demir after I have my whip and make sure everything is alright. Ok?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Dristan asked.

  The two women looked at each other, silently communicating something they weren’t going to let us in on. After a few minutes of facial expressions and scoffs, Karina sighed.

  “Fine.”

  Dristan raised a questioning brow at me, at the shake of my head he brushed off the questions sitting on his lips and opted for just agreeing with his woman.

  “Fine, we’ll meet up…” that was the question wasn’t it? Where could we meet up if there wasn’t a safe place?

  Lumi took a deep breath, leveling me and Dristan with an official glare, “on the edge of Castlehedge, close to the drop off cliffs. Tomorrow night.”

  “What?” We snapped. Another night of dealing with the honor guard was pushing our fighting abilities to the extreme. Considering we hadn’t had any sleep and the only thing we had eaten were the doughnuts this morning.

  “Drop off cliffs, tomorrow night, see ya there.” Karina said with finality as she looped her arm through Lumi’s and started down the mountain away from my house.

  When they were out of sight, Dristan turned to me with his thumb hooked in the direction the girls had just left in. “What have we gotten ourselves into?”

  I threw my hands up, “hell if I know, man. Hell if I know,” I took another longing look at the ruins of my home and sighed again. “More importantly,” turning back to him, I shook my head, “were you able to see what Luminous told Karina to do?”

  He snapped his fingers and pointed at me, “that’s what I forgot to tell you. I can’t see anything in her.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he shook his head and kicked at the snow, “I can’t see what she’s thinking, her most inner thoughts. Nothing.”

  Falling in step beside him, we walked away from my smoldering home while the snow continued to fall. It’s been one hell of a night—hell, who was I kidding? It’s been one hell of a year. One I hoped was going to end on a high note, but knew in my gut of guts, there wasn’t going to be a happy ending for any of us. Not if Onyx Elite and the HG had anything to say about it.

  “What’re we going to do about Christmas?” Dristan asked, breaking my thoughts up.

  I frowned and raised a brow at him, “everything that’s going on right now and you’re worried about Christmas?”

  “It’s the happiest time of the year, Demir.” He snapped, not looking at me.

  I slapped his shoulders and looked around the woods, “I know, Dris, but right now, the last thing we need to be worrying about is Christmas. How the fuck are we going to survive the next twenty-four hours.”

  He started to ask for clarification when he spotted exactly what I was talking about. Standing behind the very tree line we were headed toward was six honor guard members with feral smiles covering their smug faces.

  “In the words of my wife,” I whispered to my best friend, “well, shit.”

  “If that isn’t the fucking truth,” Dristan swallowed hard and nodded, “show time?”

  With a deep breath, I cracked my neck, “show time.”

  Chapter 17 A Fight to Remember

  I pressed myself further into the shadows as I watched the guard members rip apart my parents’ house. My mother and father were sitting in the dining room, straight backed in the chairs and unmoving. While an unmeasurable amount of guilt slowly seeped into my veins as I watched the scene unfold.

  I had brought this upon my family and now, I couldn’t do anything but wait until the members left the house so I could go in. Closing my eyes, I tried to think of a way to keep my family safe and stay alive.

  If Inessa were here she’d fight the members tooth and nail to the very—bloody—end; granted, she wouldn’t get any further than my parents and I’d end up dying with my sister trying to protect her, but the point was simple. Inessa would’ve done something to stop the animals from destroying my childhood home.

  I opened my eyes again, watching two of the senior members yell in my parents’ faces demanding they tell the guard where I was. Of course, my father being the cool and calm man he was simply looked into the arrogant ass’s face and said he didn’t know. And that was the truth.

  I had always, always kept my location, my apartment, my everything a secret from my parents because I had previously seen what the honor guard was capable of when it came to manipulating family members to get to the desired target.

  Tactically speaking it was smart, but I knew the tactical way of thinking and knew how to turn the tables on the BC’s dogs. As long as
my parents didn’t know anything about me, they’d live to see another day. And right now, I was banking on my cautious reasoning to prove me right. Besides, there was nothing to say the members in my childhood home right now weren’t going to kill my parents, hoping the act would draw me out of the shadows.

  When the entire house was cleared, the remaining men filled the dining room and waited for their marching orders. Looking at my mother, I knew whatever the head idiot was saying to my father must have been bad, because tears were steadily streaming down her face. Unfortunately, my phone rang, pulling my attention away from the window, I pressed my back to the tree trunk and answered.

  “What’d you find Karina?”

  “Are you sitting down?” Her voice didn’t sound like her own and didn’t spark any hope in my heart. If anything, her tone alone was enough to sink a ship.

  “Not exactly, why?”

  “Do you know where Lovett is?”

  “No?”

  She cursed under her breath and sighed, “Svenia was the one to kill off Gerealdo.”

  So, the Gold Guard bitch was the one behind the death of Silver’s senior member. Somehow that didn’t surprise me; Svenia Lovanna wasn’t the nicest person to deal with and I had gotten the feeling on more than one occasion, when she didn’t get what she wanted she was going to make the offending party pay.

  “Wait,” I shook my head, glancing over my shoulder toward the house, “so what does Lovett have to do with any of this?”

  “I’m beginning to think he was the one to go after Gold.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, I’m just telling you what I found out,” she blew out a hard breath. “Look, Lum, we’re chasing our tails right now and like I said back at Demir’s, he’s the only one between the two of you that has a fighting chance of getting redemption. So—”

  “You’re telling me to give up while I’m ahead?”

  “In short? Yeah, I don’t want to watch you die because of some screwed up plan that led to you killing those judges. Even if Silver does take your side on everything, you did kill Holt and Sooter in retaliation.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, internally cursing myself for being such an impulsive idiot when it came to my temper. On the bright side—assuming there was a bright side at this point—I had gone down fighting.