The Lightning Bearer

by April Zyon

  Everyone was silent for a long time, most likely absorbing the words and their meaning. “Well shit, now what?” Dieter asked with a laugh.

  “Anything we want I guess,” Nolan said quietly. “We have a long life ahead of us, with those we love right here, so we can do whatever our hearts desire.”

  “A vacation,” Thomas said. Some of the others nodded. “A real vacation. We’ve been on the go for so long it’ll be nice to be somewhere we can relax, go at our own pace, and then come back refreshed to do whatever it is we want. What do you say, Pepper, want to go on a vacation with us?”

  “I would love to go on vacation with you.” Pepper’s smile got even wider. “Where do you think you will take me? Where do you guys want to go on vacation?”

  “There is an island that you can all use as your personal vacation resort. It’s an island that Dite and I have cultivated. There is a spa and large resort there. You guys could use it if you wanted to.”

  “I think that I would rather go somewhere that the gods don’t have a hand in. No offense or anything, Ares, but I really would like to have a month without any gods or goddesses around,” Lincoln chimed in.

  “None taken, dear,” Aphrodite said.

  “I’d prefer somewhere without sand, too. Not saying we can’t do the whole beach experience, but maybe we should do something without sand to start off with. We’ve all had more than our fair share of that shit in places nothing should ever go,” Thomas said. “Maybe we go do the UK, England, and Scotland. Check out some history of the non-Greek sort.”

  “Yes. I want that as well. Ireland, Scotland, Paris, and so on.” Pepper’s excitement was nearly palpable. “How soon can we leave? I could be packed in like an hour, and I’m so ready to go. Well, I might have to ask one of the gods to do some of their fun stuff and get me a passport since I don’t have one.”

  “Done, and done,” Aphrodite said. “It should only take us a few minutes to scrounge one up for you. Why don’t you go get packed while my brother and I take care of it? Anyone else need a passport while we’re at it?”

  “Thank you,” Pepper said with a grin and looked to Lincoln and Thomas. “Come on, guys. I want to go on vacation. Please?” She was ready to go and ready to go now. It was evident with the way that she was practically dancing in her seat. “Come on, guys, let’s go and pack.” She pulled both men up, and they raced to the house.

  Ares laughed. “I’m glad to see her happy. It’s been far too long since she’s had happiness.” He looked at the others and nodded. “So, who else is going on vacation?”

  “What do you say, baby? Want to go on vacation, too?” Gareth asked Camilla. “We can go anywhere you want if you want. Or we can stay home, kick all these bums out, and have the place to ourselves for a few weeks.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to France,” Camilla told him. “France, Switzerland. Anywhere other than here. What do you say? Vacation with me?”

  “Whatever you want,” Gareth said quietly. He pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Ares, you’ll keep an eye on the place, right? If we all bug out for a few weeks, I mean. I don’t know if everyone will take off, but if they do we’ll need someone to peek in from time to time to ensure no one thinks to bunk here during our absence.”

  “Not a problem. I will do it because I’m looking forward to using your T1 line for my gaming. You don’t mind, right?” Ares rubbed his hands together and smiled. “I can’t wait to get back into my games. It’s going to be awesome.” Ares heard the women laughing and shot them dirty looks. “I’m telling you, I’m the God of Gaming. Dammit.”

  Owen got up and pointed a finger his way. “You can use whatever you want as long as you do not change anything. I find out one setting has been altered I’ll cut you off remotely. You might be the God of War and Gaming, but the internet is my realm. I will wipe everything you’ve worked at gaining right the fuck out back to level one.”

  “I won’t change it, but I am so going to use it,” Ares said with a laugh. “Hot damn. Gaming. So, you guys are all leaving, right?” He was looking forward to having time alone, using Owen’s set up and whipping the hell out of the little punks that thought that they would take over his Gaming status. “Go, the lot of you. Take time and take a vacation,” Ares said with a nod. “Passports are on your beds, bags are packed, so go get them and enjoy.”

  “I do believe we’re being kicked out of our own house,” Mikhail muttered. Heaving a sigh, he lifted Camilla off his lap. “Go smack your uncle, and then we’ll grab what we need. You didn’t happen to arrange any tickets, did you?” he asked him.

  Camilla went to Ares and gave him a hug. “Actually, you all have private jets waiting for you at the airport. The flight plans have been filed with the FAA, and they are fully fueled. Now get the hell out of here,” Ares said and gave Camilla a kiss to her cheek.

  “Unreal,” Nolan said. “Well, I guess we’re going on vacation, Hailey. Best we go see what the god felt necessary to pack for us. Then we should likely repack accordingly for wherever you want us to go.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Let’s go.” Hailey held tightly to Nolan’s hand and together moved toward the stairs and their rooms.

  Ares watched the couples as they left one by one. He looked to Aphrodite and nodded. “It’s been a very long few years for them. It’s good that they are getting to use this time to relax. So, Dite, you going to stay and game with me for a while?”

  “I don’t have anything else planned,” she said, wiggling her toes. Pushing up from her chair she stretched her arms over her head. “Can we put it on hold for maybe an hour? I really need to have a power nap. I wasn’t even kidding about not getting any sleep the last few nights with Zeus throwing that fit.”

  “Sure.” Ares stood and looked at his sister and then the house. “We did the right thing this time, didn’t we? I think that for the first time in a hell of a long time, we can relax. Let humanity take over for a while. With Scions like those men helping keep the planet safe I think that we will be able to rest. What do you think, Sis?”

  Slipping her arm through his Aphrodite leaned her cheek on his arm. “We did good, brother. You chose well.” She let out a breath and gave his arm a squeeze. “Go and say all your goodbyes while I find somewhere to sleep. You are chomping at the bit to see them off, I can tell. So do your part, and then get us set up.”

  She let go and walked into the house. Turning at the door, she smiled at him. “You did good, Ares. They are all men and women who are the very best humanity could offer.”

  Ares smiled at his sister and nodded. “We did well.” He told her and watched her walking away. Looking up at the skies Ares smiled. “We all did well,” He told the cosmos. Without another word he ensured that the area was cleaned up and followed his sister inside so that he could see off the people he had gotten so close to, the family that he had gotten attached to. Life was damn good.

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  BONUS SAMPLE CHAPTER

  STONE

  Silver Devils MC, 1

  April Zyon

  Copyright © 2017

  Chapter One

  Ava Charleston

  I didn’t think that I would ever feel terror the likes of what I was feeling right now. I had seen some crazy stuff in my time as a wedding planner, but never before had I seen anything like I had walked in on at Bethany and Evan’s place. With my keys in my hands I was running toward my car. I had to get out of there. I had to find safety, but I had no idea where that was. I didn’t even know if there was such a place now. I still couldn’t believe what I had walked in on. I had thought that I was going over to
soothe a skittish bride, and I never believed that by going over to soothe Bethany I would have walked in on one of the singularly most heinous acts I’d ever seen in my life.

  “Not now, Ava. Hold your shit together,” I told myself while I ran toward the relative safety that my Kia SUV offered me. I got into the SUV and hit the phone button on the wheel of my car. Police, yes, I had to call the cops. That was the best solution, right? Why the fuck did Bethany and Evan live so far away from the city? It was going to take the cops forever to get here.

  Wait, no.

  I immediately killed the call before I finished dialing the last 1 in 911. Fortunately, I had remembered at the last moment that the fiancé of the bride I was going to placate was a freaking cop. He was a damn homicide detective of all things. If that wasn’t enough, I knew for damn certain that the entire force was so corrupt that they were all in someone’s pocket. It was a total boys’ club, and I knew that no one would ever listen to me about anything I said about Evan. I also knew that Evan had several of the Feds in the area as his best friends. Hell, they had been part of the bridal party, but then Evan had replaced them at the last minute.

  “Oh, God,” I whispered in the nearing darkness of the afternoon and then saw a sign on the side of the road that read, You can always go home.

  “Home.” No one knew anything about me in this city, not really. Home. Back to my place of birth, that was where I could go and be safe, sort of.

  With that thought in mind I drove the twenty minutes to the first bank and pulled out as much cash as I was allowed on my debit card and then drove to another one of my bank branches to do the same thing. I then maxed out my credit card’s cash advance limits, and filled up my SUV hybrid and took off for the beaches and bright lights of Eden Isle, and home. It was a place I hadn’t been in more than fifteen years, not since graduating high school there. The honest truth was, however, that I don’t know if the family that I have there would hide me, but I hoped that I could count on a few of them.

  Rubbing my temples and chewing my lower lip, I hesitated on what to do. I had already driven outside of town and was parked in a grove of trees while I tried to think of what to do next. I watched the sun drown in the horizon, the warming rays of its light starting to wink out and allowing the darkness to win. The oranges and yellows soon turned to greys and blacks. That was when I realized I had been sitting there still for some time. I wished that I could call my mom to talk to her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t talk to Mom because she had died two years ago, and none of my family had come to the funeral. The only thing I had gotten were phone calls, one from a cousin of mine telling me that if I ever needed anything he would be there for me.

  Maybe I could turn to him? After all, Charles and I had always been close as kids. His mom had taken care of me while Mom worked, and Charles and I were within a few years of each other’s age so maybe he would help me? I debated my decision for a short time. I didn’t want to endanger him, but what choice did I have? I’d spent a couple of hours just clearing out my bank, packing a bag, driving out of the city, and freaking out, so now it was time for me to man-up, so to speak.

  “Shit, is it wrong of me to possibly put them in a murdering duo’s crosshairs?” I mused aloud as I looked up at the skies and then shook my head. No, the bride and groom might be killers, but I was pretty sure that my family could take care of themselves, even if I couldn’t.

  I walked into the gas station after filling up my car and purchased a cheap burner phone. I then pulled the battery out of my phone and tossed it into my purse. Taking a deep breath, I dialed my cousin’s phone number that I had found scribbled in my phone book in what looked like my mother’s handwriting. I had kept moving, well, except for when I was trying to decide if I wanted to call Charlie or not, and now that I was sitting at a gas station I started to feel nervous. I prayed he would answer quickly.

  When he answered, it sounded like Charles was at a party of some kind. I heard him shout a gruff, “Yeah, who the fuck is this?”

  Yep, that was my cousin all right.

  “Charlie, hey, it’s Ava,” I said and slid into the car. “Hey, I hate to do this, but I need help.” There was a tremor in my voice when I spoke, a real fear that wasn’t there ever before when I talked to him, something I was sure he would pick up on since he knew me as well as he did.

  “Ava?” I heard him yelling, and then he spoke to someone else. “Get the fuck off of me. This is fucking family, bitch.”

  “Wow, Charlie. Seriously, you don’t have to talk to people like that,” I told my cousin as I started the long drive toward my hometown.

  “Yeah, I do when people don’t take the hint.”

  I noticed it was quieter now. I had heard several men call out to him and call him “Sarge,” but that didn’t make sense. I knew he never served in the military. He’d done some time in jail, but not the military.

  “Talk to me, cuz. You wouldn’t be calling me from an unknown number if there wasn’t something wrong, and you wouldn’t be calling me in the middle of the night either. I know we were tight and we still are, but you would never call me in the middle of the night.”

  I offered a lot of services, and stupidly I gave my cell number as well as my home number to the brides that I assumed would get cold feet before the wedding. I had learned quickly how to spot those runners. Now I was hating myself for doing those things because it now had me running.

  “Yeah.” Trust him to get straight to the point and understand the situation. “I’m in trouble, Charlie,” I whispered to him while pulling onto the interstate. “Like serious trouble. I need a place to hide while I figure out what to do next because I’m at a total loss.”

  I heard him snicker and ask, “How much trouble can a wedding planner get into?”

  “The kind where she walks in a serial killing couple and was supposed to be next on the menu and the male side of the duo is a cop?” I asked with more than a little snark to my tone, shrugging in the darkness even though he couldn’t see the action.

  “Wait, what?” Once more he shouted. I could hear him shout for “pledge,” which I thought was weird that he wanted to clean furniture at this time of night but whatever floated his boat. “Back up and tell me everything, cuz.”

  I did just that. I began to tell Charlie about the night I had.

  “It all started when I got the call from Bethany in tears. She had been ready to call off the wedding, even though everyone could see how perfect she and Evan were together. The two of them seemed to complement each other like salt and pepper, but when Bethany called in a complete panic, two days before their wedding, I reacted and did what I do for all brides. I went to her in order to figure out what was happening.” I began to speak slowly because I didn’t want to leave anything out. “When I arrived at the woman’s home I had to park a block away because of a street cleaner, which was fine with me. I mean I desperately needed the exercise anyway since I was starting to gain back more of the weight I had lost.” I hesitated and then continued my conversation with Charlie.

  “Thankfully, I had only taken my keys and had locked my purse in the glovebox. Yes, I still carry a very small purse.” I had to pause and smile because Charlie had always teased me when we were kids about me carrying such a small purse. “I of course had my phone with me, too. I approached the house, one that was well off the road and on one of those triple lots.” I knew that Charlie would know what kind of house and property I was talking about. “Anyway, the woman lived far off the road. I looked in the window first because I heard Evan—he’s the groom. Anyway, I thought I wouldn’t be needed if he was there. If they were talking I was going to leave them at it, but what I saw shocked me to my core. Evan was covered in blood and was hacking away at a woman; one of the bridesmaids, actually. I nearly shit myself but froze for a moment.”

  I hesitated before talking again. “Evan heard me when I gasped aloud and turned to the door. Bethany opened it. For several seconds, I just stood there and didn�
�t move until she reached out with a gun in one bloody hand and a knife in the other. I was fucking terrified, Charlie. I swear I think I saw fucking Jesus in that second because of how afraid I was.

  “Then Bethany spoke. It was chilling to hear what she had to say. She said, ‘Oh, look, honey, goody-two-shoes number six is here. I think we should try the bleach with this one.’” I paused for a moment, taking a deep breath, and then continued speaking. “I didn’t think, Charlie. I just reacted. I slammed my fist, which held my keys in it, into Bethany’s temple while she was looking at her bloody fiancé, Evan. I then took off running for my SUV while trying to figure out what to do next. She called me number six, Charlie. I had seen five heads. Two of them had been bridesmaids, one was the mother of the groom, one was the priest, and the other was the father of the bride. The only thing that ties all of us together is the fact that we were all big parts of the wedding. The other five had made suggestions to change the wedding, and I had agreed with several of the suggestions. I don’t understand why I would be in their crosshairs, however.”

  I finished my story with a slight sob. I couldn’t help it. “So that’s what happened, but the biggest issue is the fact that Evan is a homicide detective back there. I maxed out my bank and credit cards so that I could have cash, and my SUV is a hybrid so I should be able to make most of the trip without stopping, thankfully, but I’m bringing trouble with me, Charlie. Tell me now if you think I should go somewhere else. I just didn’t know where to go or what to do.”