by Jasmine Walt
Well, yeah. That made perfect sense to me. Like broken bones uncovered or an artifact whose date was hard to place, you had to only piece things together to get a clear picture.
“That’s where you are so wrong, Nia. The world is a system. We’re all connected. What happens above affects those of us below. Michael tells me some humans are playing with atoms.” She shook her head in a tsking fashion. “Even without their explosives, they’ve caused the extinction of hundreds of my creations in the last five hundred cycles. If humanity is allowed to go on this way, it could be the end to us all. It’s my worst nightmare, and I do not dream.”
“But… but…” I felt like a kid trying to argue against an unfair punishment. I’d only been in the vicinity of the mischief. I hadn’t planned or partaken of any of the raucous behavior, but I still felt the blow of the lash. “You’ve saved everything that ever lived. Now you’re going to purposely eradicate a whole species. It’s not right. It’s not fair.”
Yes, that was my argument. The good old the world is unfair argument. And just like with human parents, it wasn’t going to fly with God.
“Maybe not,” said Eden. “But it may bring balance. You’ll come to see that I’m right. Not now, but maybe in a few centuries or a millennium. You should be excited. You’ll get to be a part of something new. You can record from the beginning.”
Eden brushed her hands on her sides. The dirt had long since fallen from her flesh and her hands were wiped clean.
“I have to get back to work,” she said.
Before I could launch another lame argument, Eden dissipated.
7
I walked aimlessly around through paradise. The wonders ceased to amaze me after the anticlimactic meeting with my dad and the pre-apocalyptic run-in with Eden. I was headed nowhere, so of course my feet led me to him.
Zane sat in a pasture not far away from where Gabriel and I had talked. He’d stayed near. All my long life, he’d never been so far he couldn’t reach out to me.
He sat on a mound of colorful grass, sketching. But there was no parchment before him, no brush in his hand. Instead, he’d peeled the skin of his fingertip away and was drawing in the air with his light. I couldn’t make out the sketch from this distance, so I moved closer.
As my footsteps carried me to him, all anxiety and urgency for the plight of humanity left me. My most pressing desire was to climb into Zane’s lap, to be wrapped in his arms and drowned in his kisses. It had been so long since we’d kissed. My belly grumbled for an entirely different reason.
I lifted my foot to take a step, but something held me back from running and diving into Zane’s chest. I moved forward, but slowly. As I approached him from behind, his shoulders tensed.
It was slight. I’m sure I only noticed it because I knew him so well. He never tensed when I came near him. Well, unless we were fighting. Were we fighting?
My steps halted as I stood rooted in uncertainty. I settled down just beyond his reach, folding my legs into a pretzel as my butt hit the soft ground. I opened my mouth to speak, but something caught in my throat and I clamped my lips shut.
“The first time I saw you,” Zane said, “was just over there.”
He pointed to a field of purple blooms. The memory came to me instantly. Memories of him separated easily from the mass now. Plus, I’d touched this sight not too long ago.
They were the same flowers with the huge bulbous heads from my memory. The ones I’d seen when I’d woken up from death. Most of the flowering heads remained closed as their stems shifted in a breeze I didn’t feel. A few of the petals were open and a couple of stamens blinked. I turned my gaze back to Zane.
“Zane? Are we still not okay?”
He was facing away from me. When he turned back a frown creased his brows. “We’re fine.”
The space between his shoulder blades called to me. Comfort and peace waited for me in those broad shoulders, and I wanted so desperately to reach out and grab it after all that we’d been through. My hands balled into fists in my lap.
“Why won’t you let me touch you?” I asked.
His head dipped. He turned enough so that his chin touched the top of his shoulder. “Touch, in this place, is different.”
So, I was right. There was something Zane didn't want me to see from his past. When Vau had touched me, I’d seen her memories, more than I’d wanted to see. When Gabriel had touched me, his vast knowledge overwhelmed me, and then I felt all his feelings, or lack thereof, when he showed me his memories of my mother.
“Just tell me what it is you don’t want me to know,” I said. “It won’t change anything.”
“You think I’m hiding something from you?”
I lifted my chin to bounce my head up and down in a nod, but something stopped me. The only things Zane had ever hidden from me were things about my past. My eyelids felt heavy as I realized the truth. It wasn’t his memories he was afraid of.
“I can’t change anything I’ve done in the past,” I said.
“I’m not asking you to change anything. I just…” He trailed off as he finally turned and faced me. His gaze narrowed. His head cocked to the side in observation, but the pupils of his eyes darted here and there as they regarded me. I knew that look.
“Don’t move,” he said.
“No.” I shook my head and held up my index finger. “Don’t you dare.”
“Just one second, mon petit coeur.”
I huffed out a breath, knowing I’d lost his full attention. He got this way whenever he saw something beautiful that he wanted to capture with his art. Zane was a man obsessed when it came to his craft.
He reached up to the sketch he’d done with his energy. The yellow mist came back into his hand. Then he turned and began to sketch my face using the energy of his very soul.
“When did you learn to do that?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Probably before, when I lived here. I just remembered how.”
His essence left his fingertip as he drew the outline of my face. Two fine lines formed the half crescents of my left eye, then another two for my right. Thicker lines of energy formed my upper lip.
“Zane? You don’t need to draw me. Not if you’re going to look at me forever.”
“I am going to look at you forever. Don’t move.”
Don’t move.
How many times had this man said those words to me?
Don’t move.
He’d said them while painting me, sculpting me, making love to me, presenting me with a surprise, and even trying to save my life.
Don’t move.
And what had I done? I’d fidgeted from my inability to hold still. I’d shifted positions to make things better for myself. I’d walked away from him to satisfy some selfish part of myself.
Yet here he was, painting my portrait with a piece of his soul. Oh, the irony. And now he was so close but so far. He didn’t want to touch me because he didn’t want to see my past, namely the other man I’d welcomed into my arms.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but my voice was barely above a whisper, laden with shame.
Zane’s finger paused. He didn’t ask me to clarify. I probably couldn’t remember all the things I needed to apologize for when it came to him.
“I would’ve taken that fall for you,” he said. “I would’ve shoved you into Tresor’s arms if it meant you’d live. I would’ve let you go.”
I shook my head, countermanding his edict yet again to stay still. “I don’t want to be in a world without you. If you’d jumped, I’d have come in after you.”
I shifted closer. I couldn’t help myself. When I did, my forehead brushed the outline he’d drawn of my face. My nose was in the thick of the markings of his spirit.
When my flesh met his, Zane’s memories washed through me like a fine wine on a warm summer’s night. There was a riot of colors and patterns and textures and me. My face was everywhere in his thoughts, in his dreams, in his reality.
He gazed down at me as I
slept. He laughed with me as we strolled along the bank of a river. He watched over me as I reached into the earth to extract an artifact.
He was there. His arms wrapped me. He stood beside me. His silhouette kept watch in the shadows.
He didn’t need to pretend or approximate emotions. They were all there. Clearly written on his face, and if I didn’t see them clearly enough, he’d drawn them out on parchment, etched them in stone.
I breathed in the last bits of his soul. His heart was on the tip of my tongue. When I opened my eyes, his gaze was on my lips.
I closed my mouth and swallowed the energy he’d used to draw me so he would always remain inside me. I felt possessive as his essence slid down my throat. Some bits came to rest in my gut, but most took root in my heart where he belonged.
And all the while he stared. Until finally, he scooted closer. Just an inch. But it brought us to within a hair’s breadth of kissing.
It took everything in me to hold still and wait for him. It had to be his decision, his move. My move had been clear. I was all in.
Zane took a deep breath. Then he reached out his finger, the one with the tip still exposed. His hand shook as it approached my cheek. I held still for him. Mostly.
“I love you,” I said.
The tremble in his hand stopped. A smile spread across his lips. His gaze connected with mine. “I know.”
His touch was a gentle blast against my face. Just the tip of a single fingertip traced the outline of my cheek and caused a tender earthquake.
A few of my memories trickled through, mainly of us together. There was the first time I’d seen him, when I’d come up behind him on this grassy knoll. Then every first time we met after that. Looking back on it now, it was inevitable that we’d end up here, right back where we began.
More memories shuddered through. We were together in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, in Asia. Together with Vau and Epsilon, with Scully and Diaz. The two of us standing with Tres. And then me alone with Tres.
I tried to pull back, to shut that particular door. But Zane had seen. He gritted his teeth when the more intimate parts flashed of my time with Tres. Instead of trying to control my past and hide the uncomfortable truths, I put it all on the table.
There would be no more secrets between us. There would be no more hiding. I knew exactly what my future looked like from this moment on.
Zane looked in my eyes and saw that truth. A second, then a third fingertip touched my cheek. His palm cupped my chin.
My heart raced, and my breath quickened. Arousal tightened in my core until something inside of me was ready to release at the pleasure of it. But it wasn’t my intimate muscles. It was something deeper.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
But Zane only shook his head, his eyes as wide with the same confusion as mine.
“Your light wants to touch, but your flesh is in the way.”
The connection broke at the sound of another voice hovering above us. Zane yanked his hand from my face. We both turned to see Eden watching us.
There was interest in her impassive gaze. And she wasn’t alone. The dragon-riding woman stood next to her.
“I’m told that coupling with your genitals is pleasurable.” Eden wrinkled her nose as she said it. “But it pales in comparison to when you intermix your light with another’s.”
The dragon lady beside Eden peered down at us. Not at us. At Zane. She looked at his package and her face said she was all kinds of impressed.
I had the instinct to screech at her like an angry cat whose territory she was encroaching on. But she didn’t even spare me a glance.
“I found my time with your father quite pleasurable,” said Eden.
I balked, but the comment was addressed to the dragon lady. The young woman’s eyes widened, as did her lips, but it was clearly revulsion on her lips.
“Mother,” she groaned. “I do not want to hear that.”
Eden only shrugged. “Most creatures like to hear the story of their creation, but not my daughters.”
Daughter? This was one of Eden’s daughters? I wondered if Eden had made her that uniform. I doubted it with the crap job she’d done on my plain sheath.
“Can I take him home with me, Mother? Please?” Eden’s daughter fixed her gaze on Zane’s chest.
“No, Bryn.”
“What use do you have of a dead warrior?” Bryn whined.
“He’s not human or dead. He’s an Ishim. And, besides, he’s already entwined his soul with Nia.”
Bryn pouted like a two-year-old denied candy. At the same time, her eyes sparkled like a grown woman intent on getting what she wanted.
Eden turned her attention back to me and Zane. “Pleasurable as exchanging your essence might be, it is considered impolite to do it out in the open.”
She raised her brow at us, and it felt like I’d been caught with my skirt up in the backseat of my boyfriend’s car. Her point made, Eden glided away and dissipated into thin air.
“So, you’re the one that all the fuss is about.” Bryn’s golden eyes latched onto me. But only for a second. They quickly gravitated back to Zane. “Personally, I would’ve chosen the dark, broody one, but I’ve been known to like a fine French wine every now and then.”
What the hell was she talking about? I looked to Zane, but he arched his brows in disinterest, giving her the barest bit of attention.
Bryn winked at Zane, then smirked at me. “Anyway, she’s the reason I’m here, Mother.”
Bryn turned to look at the empty space Eden had left more than a moment ago. Bryn stomped her foot and rolled her eyes skyward.
“I hate when she does that. Mother!” she called into thin air. “Mother! Wait! I need a word.”
“It will have to wait,” came Eden’s disembodied voice. “Mother has a meeting.”
“But Father sent me. It’s important.”
“I’m busy, Bryn.”
“You’re always busy.”
“Go and have something sweet while I tend to my work. I won’t be but an instant.”
“An instant to you is easily a year in normal time,” whined Bryn.
There was no response.
Bryn clenched her fists and screwed up her face at the empty air. For a split second, I felt sympathy. My dad had done just the same to me, disappeared and left me frustrated and in need.
But Bryn caught my gaze. She squinted her eyes and groaned with irritation, then stormed off in those fine boots to find her mother.
8
I’d walked hand in hand with Zane for hundreds of years, thousands. He’d touched me in more intimate ways than hand to hand. But now, in this moment, every rub of the pad of his thumb sent a thrill of warmth through me. Every catch of his fingernail made my breath catch.
It was uncanny how it felt like we were strolling around on a warm summer’s day. But that wasn’t the sky I tilted my face up toward. It was the molten metal of the Earth’s core.
It streamed down the face of tall, mountain-like structures. The lava flow was like a light show with strobing reds and oranges. Golden sparks snapped into the air like sparklers. We should’ve been vaporized, but I felt like I was on the boardwalk at an oceanside resort.
“You haven’t told me about how it went with your father,” Zane said.
I shrugged, not wanting the emotionless meeting to interfere with the pleasant hum growing between us. Eden had said that exchanging our essence was pleasurable, and she was right.
When Zane’s light had touched mine moments ago, it stirred a deep need within. The sensations went beyond the summit point of a sexual climax. They started at the peak and steadily climbed upward.
I could only feel fragments of Zane through my skin now, but my marrow told me there was more. I was eager to get him alone, somewhere secluded, to figure out how intimacy worked in this garden paradise. But while we were still out in the open, where a deeper connection would be impolite, I decided to answer his question about my dad.
; “There weren’t any tears or hugs or I love yous,” I said.
What had I expected? For my father to hold his arms open to me? For the man—was he even a man?—to pull me close and tell me he missed me? For a being older than I could even comprehend to say that he was happy to have me home after all this time?
Honestly? Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I’d been hoping.
“Same here,” said Zane.
I’d almost forgotten he’d met with his father as well. When I’d awakened to Eden knitting me up, she’d said that Zane’s father had already come and collected him. “I met your father. Well, I saw him. He didn’t introduce himself or pay me any heed actually.”
“Yeah, Michael isn’t the touchy-feely type either.”
“I think he might be the archangel from the Bible. The one who led the army of God against Satan’s forces. Only it was dragons and not demons or fallen angels.”
I had never put much stock in that collection of religious books. I’d always known there was something off about them. Now that I was down here, where Hell should be, based upon biblical logic, having come face to face with God herself, and having met real live angels who didn’t seem at all interested in watching over the shoulders of the downtrodden or underdogs, I felt vindicated in my lack of belief.
“That was the impression I got,” said Zane. “He appeared to be quite militaristic.”
“You know that the Elohim are meeting right now? They’re using our memories to determine whether or not to begin the Apocalypse.”
Zane nodded. Then he took in a deep breath and sighed. The sound was not one of optimism.
“Well, we can’t just stand here,” I said. “We have to do something.”
Zane turned to me with a look I knew all too well. It was his I have to talk you out of one of your harebrained ideas look. Mixed with his Can’t we just have a good time instead of you picking a fight look. And a touch of his I’m about to get punched in the face as I stand beside you and support you in your cray-cray look.
But then his eyes slipped past me. His gaze narrowed. Something dark moved in the reflection of his pupils. Zane pulled me flush to his body, turning me to the side. He raised his free hand as though to ward off an attack.