Instincts. Screaming. Overtaking her passion even as she fought to outrace those terrible premonitions, rearing their ugliness against the supernatural bliss, intruding harshly on her indescribable rapture, and the fear of what was and what would be gripped her with fresh sadness, pounding home the notion that this fairytale, this storybook fantasy, would not have a happy ending.
It never could.
Zac couldn’t read minds but he could read an expression, and as deep as her passion was in that moment, as desperately as she returned his own, loving him as hard as he loved her, she knew her face showed that deeper ache. And the thought of that, the thought that he must surely see her pain only made it worse. It drove the spiral crashing downward, and, suddenly, she was thoroughly lost. From an ecstasy that had no equal, plummeting like a stone. The moment … gone. When she felt the little tears prickling the corners of her eyes she hoped he wouldn’t see, and she tried not to let him, but when he kissed her he tasted them, and it confirmed what he most surely had already begun to know.
He brought her to him. Understanding, like no person ever understood, like no one ever could, holding her on the warm rug by the soothing fire, simply being there, so absolutely in love even as he felt her pain, her sadness, stroking her hair while outside on the balcony the rain thrummed, a powerful amplification of her tears.
In all things Zac was there for her. In all things and always and all ways, no matter what. Her strength. Her heart. Her soul. He was, he had been, he would be. He loved her more than any measure.
But not forever.
He never could. Never, ever could, and one day this impossible love would come to an end.
Fairytale Zac was exposed, laid bare, and he was not happily ever after.
And as the tears ran harder, warm on her cheeks, eyes pinched tight and wishing it all away, she let them go.
Knowing when Zac was gone …
She would be utterly alone.
CHAPTER 50: FRAILTY
“We’re assembling all units to position,” Nani’s face was clear on the tablet screen, a few signal lags now and again but in all not much different than a Skype call. Only, of course, a Skype call across light years. “I expect we’ll move any day.”
Jess tilted the tablet to cut the glare. The morning sun on the stone balcony was getting brighter, the air holding onto the last of its earlier, crisp edge. She’d risen as the light broke and had been talking to Nani and Bianca. Some initial chit-chat, rolling into a long discussion of what was to come, their fears, their deepest feelings, bolstering each other’s resolve. Nani looked exhausted.
“Are you getting rest?” Jess asked.
“Thank you!” Bianca said emphatically from off screen. “See? I’m not the only one.”
“I know, I know,” Nani dismissed them both, waving a hand. “I will. Once everything is set and before we move I’ll sleep, I promise.” She looked pointedly at Jess, diverting attention from herself. “And you? You’re taking care of yourself?”
Jess nodded that she was. True or not, it wasn’t worth saying otherwise. She leaned against the balcony railing, one hand holding a small cup of the cinnamon-coffee she made earlier, in the other the tablet. She wore Zac’s shirt, the plain Tee he had on when she brought him from Earth, form-fitting on him and so amazing—everything looked amazing on Zac—hanging to her knees and elbows on her. It happened to be evening on Nani’s end, so as Jess was starting her day they were ending theirs. It was clear, however, Nani had no intention of going to sleep.
“How about Zac?” Bianca thrust her face into the picture on the other end, over Nani’s shoulder. “Is he still sleeping?” She still hadn’t seen him since Anitra and really wanted to say Hi. During the conversation she kept hoping he would wake up. They’d talked a bit about Zac, though Jess mentioned none of her fears. She didn’t dare mention any of that.
There were enough fears to go around.
“Yeah.” She glanced through the open doorway into the room. Zac was on the canopy bed where she left him, curled into the blankets, one muscular, perfect arm hooked around a pillow, all else covered. Fast asleep. She’d been so nervous, watching him all night, knowing how he struggled with the nightmares, watching him breathe, chest rising and falling, never much, and each time she could no longer hold her eyes open it seemed he would stop breathing and she would snap alert. And then each time he would start again, peaceful, and she would wait for the next frightening pause. Even now she worried, peering hard across the intervening dozen or so yards, looking for sign ...
He shifted his arm and gripped the pillow tighter.
She turned back to the screen. The girls were mostly done. They set a time for the next check-in, Jess wrapped it up, said several good-byes and see-yas, closed the channel and went back into the room. Just inside the doorway she set the tablet on a table, then went and stood on the rug. Cup in both hands, taking little, soothing sips, watching Zac.
Last night he told her if he did fall asleep to just wake him in the morning. She knew he would fight it, and when he succumbed to the sandman before she did she couldn’t let herself go, and so she stayed up watching him. When he woke she wouldn’t tell him she’d been up all night.
After a short time she went over and climbed into the bed beside him. Scooched herself to a sitting position next to his head, back against the heavy, decorative headboard, trying to find a comfortable spot. She leaned back and held the cup in her lap. It was almost empty. She tried to be deliberate and enjoy the last little bit, gave up and put the cup on the nightstand.
Gently she shook him. Might as well rouse him now. The day was starting. She could hear others moving about in the castle, voices drifting up from the courtyard below. She shook a little harder, barely moving him. Zac was heavy. She pushed harder, shoving him. Mostly all she was doing was moving herself, but he should’ve felt it. For a fearful moment she wondered what it would take to wake him. Back in her room in Boise, the first time she found him sleeping, she had to shake him and talk to him several times. What if it was worse now? As strong as he was … what if she could never get his attention? Blows to the head, dropping him out the window—what if nothing could wake him? What if he would just have to wake up on his own, and what if he never did?
Those madly escalating fears came to an abrupt halt as he stirred and opened his eyes. She watched as they came into focus, content for a moment—like someone who just woke pleasantly refreshed—then he was staring at her, a rising concern in his eyes that made her heart skip, and she noticed nothing else about him was moving. All at once her fear was spiking again.
“I can’t move,” he said. His mouth worked, his face; his eyes were alive but the rest of him ...
She tried to help him. Lifted his heavy arm and yelled at him, “Zac!” She felt her chest constricting.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. Being calm for her sake, she could tell, but he was just as freaked as she was.
“I don’t know why the rest of me can’t—”
His face froze.
“Zac!” she was up and on her knees, both hands on him and rolling him over, frantic, irrational fear seizing her. But it wasn’t irrational. Zac was in trouble.
he heard her.
She got a grip. Looked around the room.
She threw herself into him. Head over his shoulder and arms around his neck and not daring to
speak.
“It’s ok,” he held her. “It’s ok. I’m fine now.”
“It’s not ok!” she sobbed at his back. So scared. She held him tighter, squeezing him full of life. “It’s not ok.”
He put a hand to the back of her head and turned his face to speak into her hair. “I’ll be fine.” He kissed her ear.
She held him, just squeezing and pressing into him, then she pulled back to face him. Nose to nose, eyes inches from his, all of him so normal, so expected, like he’d completely shaken off whatever just froze him.
This was rocking her.
“We’re going to fix this,” she told him, voice shaking. She sniffled. “Whatever the hell is going on ... the Dominion may not have understood how they made you, but we’re going to. With all this technology,” she thought of the Kel tech and the stuff from the Reaver and Nani and everything, “there has to be a way. We won’t spare any resource. We’ll make you better, understand?” She really bored into him. “You hear me?”
“I’m just happy to be with you,” he said, completely ignoring the reality of the situation. “Each moment I can.”
She almost told him to shut up. To just shut up and stop talking like that and stop being so goddamn idealistic about it, but she didn’t. “Zac. I’m serious.”
“I am too.” He stroked her hair, and she almost did tell him to knock it off. But he was trying to make her understand. “I will always keep running to you. Do you understand? I will never stop loving you, not now not ever, and I’m not going to live in fear. I’m going to make every moment count. Whenever that final day comes, now or later or far, far in the future, when I go I go knowing we lived a lifetime. Loved a lifetime.”
“I don’t want ‘whatever we get’,” she said, sounding almost pouty to her own ears but she didn’t care.
She was going to fix this.
**
Egg was scared they weren’t going to make it. More than anything she was scared she wasn’t going to make it.
It hurts so much!
She tried again to find her father. Where was he! This couldn’t be happening. If he was dead ...
There he was. Across the way on the floor, laying flat but looking around, looking for her, behind some overturned desks and a bunch of equipment. Smoke filled the air, thick with it; a pungent smell, choking. The electric beam of a Kel rifle cracked the room brilliantly, followed by the sharp return shots of human bullets. Most of the fighting had moved outside. A little while ago the battle was raging. Through the walls Egg could hear the flurry of gunfire all around the safe house. She cringed in anticipation with each and every harsh, deadly sound. Each movement.
Dad would find her. He looked okay. She tried to croak his name but could only wince; each little movement … agony. She didn’t dare look down.
It hurts!
He saw her. A look of desperate urgency overtook him and he rose to a graceless scramble, on all fours, then to a hunched sprint—a dangerous move but he made it, flopping to his knees beside her.
The Kel would be back. Everyone who could make it out probably already did.
Somehow the Kel had found the safe house.
“Essa!” Dad whispered urgently, searching her face. He looked so desperate. She’d never seen him look this lost. He, too, refused to look down. She saw him, though, when he dropped to his knees as he slid up, saw his eyes and his expression as he scanned her, head to toe in those brief seconds, locking her eyes. The look on his face said it all.
It was bad.
“Call me Egg, Dad,” she managed to hiss.
He reached to push the hair from her face. “Egg.” Messing up what little was left of her braids in his clumsiness. She’d been trying to maintain them but it was no use. Now this. She was going to have to get them done again. B would have to do them all over. When would she see her? Were they going there next?
She couldn’t remember.
“Oh, Egg.” Dad looked so sad. So terribly, terribly sad.
The pain! It was excruciating. It felt like she was going to black out.
“It hurts,” she gave it voice. Speaking made her cough. A look of grief passed across Dad’s face and he reached a trembling hand to wipe her lip. As he took it away she saw blood on his fingertips. Her blood. Of course it was her blood. She was—
“Be still as much as you can.” He had no idea what to do. He wasn’t prepared for this. Neither was she. Her mind had gone into overdrive, it seemed, skipping from thought to thought, flashes of images, sounds. She recalled him earlier that day, right before the attack, telling a group of the Earth humans—who listened patiently—how Jessica was an angel. An angel for everyone, he made them understand, answering, he thought, their skeptical reception of his tall tales. “She’s here to protect us,” he told them. “To save us.” More of his overly simplistic, overly optimistic points of view; views that had gotten him through so much of his life, Egg realized, and, she had to admit, views that often bore out. They could be infectious.
Unwavering belief, however, would not save her now. All the earnest intent, all his devotion, all his love, all the foolish optimism he ever had and could ever project—even if he could shoot it into her like a beam ...
Wouldn’t matter. He was helpless. And he knew it.
And the truth of it, for her, took form.
She was dying.
“Hold on, Egg.”
Outside the battle only seemed to intensify. Which meant there would be no help coming.
Dad knew that too.
“I don’t want to die.” Egg wasn’t sure why she said it, it only made him more sad, unable to hold back his tears, trying to be strong. Trying to be strong for her, she knew, even as, privately, he was on the verge of breaking down. But he propped it up, and in a way it kind of made her want to be strong for him too. With an effort she relaxed her expression; tried to look better than she felt. Tried to remove the agony from her face.
“You’re not going to die,” he lied. She could see how hard he fought not to look down, avoiding the ruin of her lower body.
It’s bad.
“I never should’ve let you come,” he said. “This was not for us. We never should’ve—”
“Don’t.” She managed to make herself firm. “Don’t, Dad.” Then: “Don’t you dare.” It was hard, but she gathered a full breath and spoke clearly: “I chose this. You chose it. This is what we wanted. I believe in this. You believe in this. You believe in this more than anyone, so don’t you dare. Don’t you dare act like this was a bad idea.”
He knew she was right. The cough she’d been holding back burst from deep within, harsher than expected, and in its wake she whimpered—fascinated by the sound that came from her own mouth. As before Dad reached to her lips, her chin, wiping away the blood. Tenderly, so tenderly, and in his face she saw the faith she knew so well; a sadness behind it as if he could weep forever, and maybe he would, but overlaying that he knew their purpose was greater, his love for his daughter was limitless and he knew, above all else, that she’d done the right thing. Acted for the greater good. It was her choice. This was a war for salvation, and they’d fought it, and they should never, ever regret any part of that.
Her pain eased to a throb. She took a deep, shuddering breath.
And realized she was with her dad.
It struck her, most odd, under the circumstances, that simple, amazing fact—I’m with Dad!—a sharp instant of clarity and …
It soothed her.
Dad! The most incredible man. Truly. She could think of no one she wanted more at her side in this moment. Not just because he was Dad but because he was one of the most incredible human beings she’d ever known. And here he was, right here with her at the end …
How remarkable was that?
Right at the moment she needed him most—the moment—and for some reason the mere realization of it caused the fear to fall away. As if a magic curtain swept gently across her and she found herself …
Content.
Dad is with me.
Hugely comforted, just to be there with him, just the two of them, she and her father, and it was a dying wish the likes of which few could ever hope to obtain.
She absorbed his presence, the warmth inside her growing, and he was with her and that was, suddenly, all that mattered.
Shots outside continued. Explosions and all else. At any moment this place could go up and likely would, but Dad stayed close. He pushed himself to sit cross-legged, awkwardly, moving her head into his lap and laying it there gently.
Utterly lost.
“I don’t know what to do,” he whispered, gentle tears falling onto her face, and she had the feeling he thought he’d failed her.
No one knows what to do, Dad, she wanted to tell him. Not now. Not when this moment comes.
You’re here, and that’s the greatest thing in the world.
She couldn’t say it. No voice would come.
I love you!
Everything else was so still, looking up into his chubby face, he teary-eyed and looking down, so lovingly, trying to give her reassuring smiles. He started talking, telling her how much she meant to him, how much she meant to everyone, how great her life, what a powerful, amazing person she was, a hero, how proud he’d always been and would always be and all sorts of other things one told someone at a time like this.
On he went, as if words might fix it, having nothing else, insisting help would come.
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 56