End of Days: The Complete Trilogy (Books 1-3)

by Meg Collett

  So I did. Three sheets to the wind, I got into my Mustang and took off. I remember watching Lori Anne pouting in the rearview mirror and looking good in those tight jeans.

  I had a bottle of Jack pressed between my thighs as my feet worked the clutch and the gas. I rolled the windows down and enjoyed the clammy summer wind on my even clammier face. The gel in my hair was running. I had pit stains on the white undershirt I wore. I was a pool of sweat, but I didn’t mind.

  I drove the back roads carelessly, slightly swerving, sometimes hooting and hollering. I passed a few old-timer cops, but none of them came after me. The cops in this town were just a ruse. Everyone knew the Descendants were the true protectors. Besides, I was Isaac St. James, and wildness was expected of me.

  I took a long swig from the bottle. The whiskey sloshed over and down my lips, dripping onto my chest. I was so drunk, I didn’t feel the burn as it slugged down my throat. When I went to put the cap back on, I realized it had rolled into the floorboard.

  “Shit,” I said, the words a slurred grumble.

  I turned down the radio as Bruce Springsteen crooned about a river, like the quietness would help me find the lid better. I reached under my feet, fingers exploring the dirty floor of my ‘Stang. I didn’t feel it anywhere. For a split second, I took my eyes off the road, squinting into the darkness.

  The car swerved. I jerked up, my fingers clenching the bottle cap, and corrected the car. I left skid marks on the road, but I kept it between the lines. I smirked and put the lid back on.

  I don’t know how long I drove around, but I know I kept drinking. I drank until the road’s yellow and white lines shook and twisted. Everything spun. My head felt fuzzy and my stomach warm. A foolish grin stayed plastered on my face.

  I was an idiot, I know. My actions were foolish, but that was the exact reason I did them. I was young, and I needed to feel something. I was deluded. Every day and night, I spent talking about angels and Hell and Heaven. My invincibility complex was a natural reaction for a young man my age and in my position. I was a Descendant. I would never die if there were angels.

  I slowed, drawing closer to a set of train tracks. They set atop a steep, little hill. It was a kind of hill you couldn’t see over your dashboard as you went over the tracks, your car bouncing and jigging over the railroad ties. I drove up the hill, but my foot slipped off the clutch.

  My car sputtered then died. “Sonovabitsh,” I slurred, groping for the gearshift.

  For some reason, I couldn’t get it back in first. The front of my car was wedged on the other side of the tracks, which kept the car from rolling back down the hill. I looked down the track, thinking at least there wasn’t a train coming.

  That thought kept me from understanding the circle of blinding light in the distance. It was far away, and it took me a long second to comprehend. But when I did, it was not with a wild, cursing frenzy to either get the car started again or abandon it.

  Instead, I did neither. I sat there, stunned. Mortality was a lesson I learned in those slow moments as the circle of light chugged furiously closer. We all die. If I sat on those tracks for another half minute, I would be dead. It was overwhelming. Who would miss me? Lori Anne? Had I made a difference in this war of the angels’? Was I even important?

  I didn’t think too long on it, because I looked through the windshield and saw an angel. It had long, shimmering blond hair and stunning blue eyes. It wore a flowing, white nightgown. The angel smiled, settling her hands on the hood of my car.

  Then I recognized the angel. It wasn’t an angel. It was that weird girl from the diner. My mouth hung open in shock, because I could totally see through her white nightgown. And in that moment, in that particular darkness, she was stunning. Beautiful. She might as well have been an angel.

  My car moved. Slowly, the front wheels rose over the railroad tie. The train blared its horn in one long, ear-splitting wail. Finally, the wheels were free. My car rolled backwards down the hill. I fumbled for the brake, but never made a connection.

  She walked down the hill, the moon at her back, as the train flew past. Her hair twisted around her face from the gust of wind. Her nightgown pressed against her slim body, causing my mouth to water.

  She walked toward me, drawing up beside the window. She didn’t pause when she opened my door. Leaning into the car, she reached across me and unbuckled my seatbelt. Blond hair like silver and gold silk brushed across my shoulder.

  “Scoot over,” she whispered into my ear.

  I scrambled over into the passenger seat as quickly as I could. She got in, buckled the seatbelt, and easily put the car in gear. The train was gone. The car bounced over the tracks.

  “I was about to get out of the car, you know,” I said, trying not to slur. I sounded like an idiot, but I needed to impress her. She looked beautiful, sitting behind the wheel of my car with the wind in her hair. I smelled the sweet, soapy scent of her skin.

  “No you weren’t,” she said.

  “I was!” I spluttered the words. She only smiled. “I was just, you know, seeing how long I could wait.”

  She glanced over at me, her blue eyes shining in the moonlight. Her stare pinned me to my seat. My mouth clapped shut. I wanted her to look at me like that forever. The thought surprised me. I never thought in forever terms.

  “You don’t have to lie to me, Isaac,” she said, looking back to the road. “You’ll never have to be anything but who you are with me.”

  “What are you saying?” The alcohol was pressing around my brain like a black fog. I was losing it.

  “I’m saying, quit pretending. You’re wasting precious time.”

  “Precious time.” The words sounded perfect in my foggy brain as they left my drunk, sluggish tongue. The words ran in circles in my mind.

  She took me home that night, straight to my house without asking for directions once. She parked my car and got out.

  I stumbled out of the car. She was already walking away. “Wait!” I shouted, but even I didn’t understand the word.

  Yet, she still turned. And she turned around with a smile. “Yes?”

  “How are you getting home?” I asked. But I wanted to ask how she had pushed my car over the tracks. But my drunk brain couldn’t process those sorts of words or thoughts.

  “I’ll walk.”

  “You sure? I could drive you!” She laughed, which made me frown.

  “That’s okay. You stay home the rest of the night. I’ll be okay.” She walked off again.

  “Wait!”

  She was on the road. Her pale bare feet were a shock to me. “What was your name?” How had I forgotten her name?

  “Iris,” she said simply, smiling. Then she was gone. And I passed out in my driveway, dreaming of angels in white nightgowns with the name of Iris. They were the best dreams I’d ever had.

  11

  Isaac had been asleep for a while, passed out after his story. After hours of driving, they were in Maryland, the dark night slipping by. Bob Seger played softly from the radio. The steady rumble of the large SUV almost lulled Michaela to sleep. Even the icy slash of wind through her open window did little to assuage her weariness. She was stretching when he woke, talking like he’d never stopped.

  ***

  I stumbled into the diner. I’d walked the whole way, too scared to get into my car that morning. I looked like shit, wearing the same clothes from last night. My hair looked like I had stuck my finger in an outlet; I felt like I had. My nerves were fried. All my thoughts revolved around Iris.

  I spotted her immediately. I remembered all the times I had come through the door, ignored her, made fun of her, and now was the first time I finally saw her. She was gorgeous. Maybe not in the most obvious way, but in all the ways that mattered. My feet carried me toward her on their own accord.

  She looked up when I stopped beside her, smiling her normal, sunny smile. Seeing the state I was in, she reached out and touched my arm. It was a small gesture, but it nearly made me cry. Th
e same zap I’d felt the first day I’d met her when she passed me in the kitchen was there, but this time it was familiar. Of course, my skin would sizzle where she touched me, because she already held that sort of power over me.

  “I need to talk with you,” I croaked. “Please.”

  “Of course.” She walked away, and I followed as the patrons openly gawked. “Candy, I need to take a break.”

  Candy, a red-haired, busty waitress, regarded Iris with too-cool-for-you eyes. Then she looked at me and smirked. “I dunno. We’re awful busy.” Candy smacked her gum in Iris’s face.

  “You can have my tips for the rest of the day. It’ll be quick, I promise.”

  Candy crossed her arms, thinking. “Fine,” she snapped. “But make it fast.”

  Iris smiled, grateful. “Thank you so much, Candy.” She reached back and took my hand right there in the middle of the diner. Candy frowned. The others in the diner turned to each other and whispered. I let her lead me outside.

  She walked us toward a small grove of trees. A creek ran the length of town, meeting up with the Ohio River miles away. It was a peaceful place; one where I’d never spent much time. She released my hand and sat on a metal, rickety park bench. She smoothed her white apron. I didn’t sit, choosing to pace nervously in front of her.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  I took a deep breath. “Where were you last night?”

  “Where do you think I was?” Iris said, smiling.

  Whirling around, I jabbed my finger at her. I probably looked like a madman. Iris didn’t cringe away or even falter in her smile. “Don’t play mind games with me!”

  Her smile slipped, and I immediately regretted my words. She chewed her lip. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Isaac.”

  “What’s going on? Were you there last night on the train tracks?” I spoke quietly. My nerves, my anxiety was like a tidal wave in my gut. I don’t know what I was so scared of really. Maybe I was scared of what I thought I saw last night. I didn’t know if I’d hallucinated or dreamed her pushing my car off the tracks as the train blared down on us. All these thoughts swam in my head and made it impossible to know what was real.

  “Yes,” Iris said. Her voice was steady. “I was. You were going to die.”

  Taking a shaky breath, I raked my hands through my dirty hair. “Yeah, I know.”

  “No, really, Isaac. I saw your death. That train would’ve hit you, dragging your car nearly a hundred feet. You wouldn’t have died right away. You would’ve been scared, crying. Your death would’ve been slow and painful.”

  Her solemn words were like taking a punch in the stomach. I stared at her, open-mouthed. “How do you know that?” I whispered.

  Iris shrugged. “I know a lot of things like that. I know you have a birthmark on the middle of your back. I know you’re terrified of your father. I know that sometimes, late at night, you pray for an angel to visit you because you don’t think they’re real.” Iris paused. My mouth was hanging open. “I knew about you before I even came here.”

  “Are you an angel?” I held my breath, waiting for her answer.

  She was silent for a long time, debating. Finally she spoke. “Isaac, I’m a Nephil.”

  I sank to my knees in front of her in the soft grass beside that quiet stream. The wind left me in a rush. I stared up at her foreign blue eyes and knew. How had I not seen it before? Of course she wasn’t normal. I pressed my head into my hands. “No, you can’t be. We kill Nephilim here.” My words were muffled, anguished. “Do you know who I am? What I am?”

  Iris kneeled in front of me. She pulled my hands away from my face. My eyes were full of despair. Those words were the worst I could’ve heard. Somehow, last night, we had made a connection. She’d seen me at my worst. I barely knew her, but she was the one person I wasn’t scared to see the worst parts of me. Her words drew my attention once again.

  “Yes, I do. You’re the man I moved to Kentucky for, left my family for. I am in love with you already. We will eventually marry. You will be the father of my child, although I am not sure about the order of those two events. You are a Descendant, and you are supposed to kill me, but you don’t. You won’t.”

  “How…” I struggled with the easy words. “How do you know this?”

  “I have a powerful sight.”

  Shaking my head, I said, “The Nephilim magic is fading. Inbreeding has caused a genetic tempering of your abilities as a race.” I regurgitated the information from my classes. We were taught to fight the Nephilim, the abomination of the angel race. We were told they weren’t as powerful as they had been before the Great Flood. They were a dying race. We were meant to kill those few who remained.

  “Not mine,” Iris said.

  I looked away. The people of the little town passed by without even noticing us. It was like Iris was invisible, and I was within her force field. “I need to think about this.”

  “Okay.”

  I looked at the girl in front of me. She smiled as always. Her blond hair lit up like fire in the sun. But a light within seemed to make her blue eyes glow. How could we kill the Nephilim if any of them were like her? I hated myself more than ever in that moment.

  “How do you know I won’t go tell the others?” I asked.

  Iris leaned in and kissed my cheek. Her lips sent a chill down my spine. “I just know.”

  12

  Michaela drove in the quiet once again with the windows down. The wind was icy at night, but Isaac was feverish, and she needed the sting to keep her awake. From the backseat came Isaac’s labored breathing. She checked on him one more time before she rolled her shoulders and stretched out her neck. She was stiff from sitting still for so long. Her eyes were beginning to burn. She wasn’t blinking enough as she navigated the dark roads. In her existence, she hadn’t driven much.

  Her thoughts constantly wandered, which made her even more tired. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t push Gabriel out of her head. She kept replaying their conversation on the road. He’d changed so much. They both had. But she never would have expected for him to be the one to sign his soul over to Lucifer.

  Michaela frowned and forced the thoughts from her head. She focused only on the road and the shadows along its edges. It rained in a soft drizzle. The sound of the car’s windshield wipers soothed her tattered nerves. She slowed a little to accommodate the wet roads. Clark would be proud, Michaela thought, smiling.

  Trees lined the road. She hadn’t passed a car in a long while as the highway stretched through endless miles of open country. She smelled the wilderness, the wet trees, and asphalt. Pennsylvania drew closer. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

  A loud thump on the windshield made Michaela jump. She looked, but couldn’t find the source. The sound came again, from the roof. She squinted, looking for hail as she slowed. More and more hard objects hit the roof until if felt like she was on the inside of a giant beating drum. Dark shapes collided into the windshield and slid off.

  Michaela peered out of the car up to the sky. One of the dark shapes bounced off her open window and into her lap. Michaela screamed. The car swerved.

  The frog leapt from her lap and into the passenger seat. Michaela braked, and the car came to a jerking halt. Quickly, Michaela picked up the frog and flung it out the window. She grimaced and rolled up the windows.

  All around her, frogs fell from the sky. They plopped against the glass, sliding down with a wet sound. They hit the roof incessantly. The noise grew deafening. Thousands of frogs littered the road ahead, illuminated by the car’s headlights. They hopped everywhere. The asphalt could barely be seen for their glistening bodies.

  “Better keep moving.”

  Michaela jumped at Isaac’s voice. She looked over her shoulder. He had sat up in the backseat and peered over the console, shaking his head in wonder.

  Another frog hit the windshield. A small spider web crack branched across the expanse of the glass.

  “Might want to hurry,” Isaac ad
ded.

  Michaela took a deep breath and eased onto the gas pedal. The Jeep rolled forward, slowly. Michaela gagged as she heard the squishing beneath the tires.

  So much squishing.

  “Did you know about this?” Michaela asked, wondering about Iris’s powerful sight.

  “Some,” Isaac said. “She knew a lot more than she told me. Probably for the sake of my sanity…”

  Michaela set the wiper blades on high. Frog guts ran down the glass in brown streaks, seeing the road was challenging. The road disappeared beneath hordes of black bodies. Michaela couldn’t tell the difference between the asphalt and the ditch. The car crept along.

  “Do you think she knew about the plagues?” Michaela had to speak up above the frogs hitting the car.

  “I’m sure she did. Even from the very beginning when she moved to Kentucky, she was working to save us all from this. She knew about it, all right. She saw the end from the very beginning,” Isaac said quietly.

  He sighed heavily and sat back in the seat. Michaela looked in the rearview mirror. “You should rest some. We’re almost there.”

  Isaac nodded and laid down. He was silent for so long that Michaela thought he’d fallen asleep. She drove off the road twice during the silence. She jumped again when he spoke, his voice muffled behind her.

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself for this, Michaela. Sometimes you have to break something before you can fix it.”

  Michaela kept her eyes steady on the road. The pounding against the car seemed to wane. “Gabriel blames me,” she said soft enough she thought Isaac wouldn’t hear.

  “He’s just being an ass, which is understandable. Just give him time.” Isaac paused. “But don’t let him break you, Michaela. Don’t ever waver. You’re doing the right thing. Iris saw you long ago too. She knew you’d be the one to save us.”

  Michaela bit her lip, but she didn’t respond. Soon enough, Isaac’s soft snores filled the car once again. Michaela drove carefully through the rain of frogs, but she picked up speed. The ground was flat enough now that she didn’t worry if she ran off the road. Her fingertips tingled with anxiety. The panic tightened her throat. She pushed the car faster. She needed to get to Pennsylvania.