Destiny Be Damned: Last Hope, Book 3

by Rebecca Royce

  “Wraith. Wraith. Wraith.” I pointed at the sky and everyone in the vicinity turned to where I indicated. Only the Sisters would see them. That was half the problem. Regular people never saw them coming. They just thought their friends and loved ones had died suddenly, not that they had been sucked dry by a demon wraith.

  Anne called out first. “Run.”

  I nearly collided with Neil, who reached for me. “I think you misunderstood.”

  This was not the time but he wouldn’t be able to see the wraiths. He wouldn’t even know what they were. “Run.” I pushed at him. “You’re in mortal danger.” That got his attention. “You need to run. Go with Krystal. Go now. Out the back gate and don’t stop until you are far, far from here. Listen to her. Go, Neil. All of you, now.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He didn’t need to hear the details. I didn’t know if I could save us or not. A woman screamed, and I whirled around. One of the Sisters Teagan had brought with her was in the embrace of the wraith. She writhed, seized, screamed. He fed from her and my powers lay dormant, as they would remain. We didn’t have the power to fight wraiths.

  There was no beating a wraith.

  Neil stared at the scene. “What’s wrong with her?”

  He couldn’t see them. “She is being killed by a demon wraith. There is no stopping it. There is nothing I can do. I need you to go. Now. Before they kill you. Now. Go. You were going anyway. Go now. Go.” I shoved at him, hard. He didn’t budge. Neil was pure muscle. That was fine. He had to listen to me. “Go before you get killed.”

  I ran from him even as he reached for me. I didn’t know what he would have said. Goodbye, maybe? We had once chance. There was more screaming, and Anne giving orders. I dove into the crawl space under the main house.

  Only demons could beat wraiths. And we had one.

  I crawled forward on my hands and knees, as fast as I could. My breaths came in bursts. My heart was in my ears. I was just as likely to be killed under the house. Even with my powers turned on—which they did now that I was near a demon—I couldn’t handle the wraiths. Five. We had five wraiths floating in the Sisterhood. I’d never have thought it possible.

  “Bob,” I called out. “Please. Please. Please.” I was begging a demon.

  “Oracle? Why are you here?”

  “Wraiths. There are wraiths.” He might not care. He didn’t want to be involved. Yet, the demons had always hated the wraiths.

  “That is not possible.” He sounded like he yawned. “They are gone.”

  “They are here. Five of them now.”

  There was silence. Had he gone to sleep? “They dare defile my place of rest? Oracle, if I were you, I would get out of the way.”

  I nodded and backed up. Crawling backward was awkward, but I did my best.

  The scene in front of me when I got out from under the house was chaos. Anne and Daniella shot orders. I saw Krystal, baby in her arms, jump on a carriage. They took off. My guys were nowhere to be seen. Neither were Brooke and the other employees. Alexander was missing. The wraiths still went after the Sisters Teagan had brought.

  Her Guard—Aidan—dragged her backward. She screamed and yet those Sisters didn’t move. They rocked. They were lost in the darkness in their minds. I knew it well. What happened if you died there? Were you stuck forever?

  I ran toward them. They couldn’t even run away. I never got a chance to reach them. Instead, our house started to shake. I whirled around. Bob was coming. He was…

  One second our house was there, the next it was rubble. Anne grabbed my arm. “What is happening?”

  “I got help.” Help that was going to destroy our home. That was okay. It didn’t matter where we slept. We couldn’t die like this. In seconds, our beautiful home, the one my guys had fixed, was rubble. Standing in the center of the rubble was the biggest demon I’d ever seen. Anne wrapped her arms around me and soon Daniella and Teagan joined us. We held each other tightly, their Guards surrounding us in a circle. The other Sisters rocked where Teagan had left them. Two of her Guards stayed with them.

  It didn’t matter. The wraiths were picking them off one by one. They’d have Teagan’s Guards in any second. She shouted at them to move. My attention was all on the demon in front of us.

  The wraiths weren’t the only things that shouldn’t have been there.

  I’d called him Bob. I hadn’t been far off. Anne spoke the words the rest of us couldn’t. “Beelzebub.”

  We didn’t just have an original demon under our house. We’d had a creator. My legs threatened to give out. Why had divinity sent us here to live with him?

  It didn’t matter. If ever there was a demon who could take on the wraiths…

  “Funny.” I swallowed. Or I tried to. “He looks just like his pictures.”

  “My baby got away.” Anne didn’t seem to be making sense, or maybe she was. In the end, that was what mattered. “He’s going to need…” She turned around. “Mason, run. Please. He needs you.”

  He shook his head. “Too late. I would have if I’d realized what was happening. Krystal has him. We’ll go for him as soon as this,” he nodded toward the demon rising, “is over.”

  Daniella shook. “My girls are gone, too.” She bit down on her lip. “And if this is it, then… I’m glad to be standing with women such as you.”

  The demon was all black, like night was black, like death was black, like the path in my mind had been black. There wasn’t really a color equivalent for what he was. Yet, he had a shape. From the top of his horns to the bottom of his feet, I could see he was real, he was there, and he was scary as hell.

  We couldn’t clear him. We couldn’t beat him. Our powers, even all together, were a joke.

  Above our heads, the ravens cawed, the spirits screamed. “Teagan?” I asked her because she could see the future. She was the prophet.

  “No future. There is just… nothing.”

  I ripped out of their arms. All three of them had things to lose. People who loved them and needed them back. I had nothing but a dream of five men who had discussed and swayed on whether to stay with me. That wasn’t love. I’d had weeks of fun. I had to convince my heart that was all it was. It didn’t matter anyway.

  Sometimes the wraiths won. I didn’t want to know if the demon wraiths could beat Beelzebub.

  I ran forward. “Hey, Bob.” I’d used that name with him. He didn’t seem to mind. I waved my hands at him. “Hi, there.”

  “Oracle.” He acknowledged me. Now that I knew who he was, whatever doubt I had about my own identity fled. I was the Oracle. Okay, that was happening.

  I pointed at the wraiths. They drifted toward us. “You see them, right? I mean you’re not blind for having been under the house?”

  “No, but you will be. You know that right? They always blind the Oracle.”

  What? No, I didn’t know that. Blinded?

  “Mika,” Anne cried out, “maybe best not to annoy Beelzebub.”

  I nodded at Sister Superior, but still, I wasn’t done. “Could you get the wraiths?”

  He laughed. “As you wish.”

  The demon raised his hand. At twelve feet tall, seeing all of him was tough. I had to stretch my head back to watch him do so. He spoke in a language I didn’t know, which was impressive because I’d been trained in them all. Yet, I didn’t know what he said. The gravel from the road outside lifted, spinning. The ground seemed to open up beneath it. There was a hole in the earth. He spoke louder, and the wraiths were actually tugged toward the hole. The demon got louder.

  Two of our Sisters were sucked into the hole

  “No,” I cried out, rushing forward.

  Beelzebub shook his head. With his other hand he sent a gush of wind to knock me backward. “They are nothing. You matter.”

  “No one is nothing,” I shouted back, trying to haul myself from the ground. “Everyone matters.”

  Anne threw herself on top of me. “Stop arguing with the demon, Mika.”

>   I knew she was right. But I wasn’t afraid of him. I might be out of my mind. But I wasn’t afraid.

  The wraiths flew underground. The dirt closed back up. The world was so still that even the birds were silent.

  “Nasty pests.” Bob spoke our language again. “I will go. For two years. When I return, this house will be rebuilt.”

  And he vanished.

  I lay on the ground in the silence. Teagan pulled out of Daniella’s arms and ran toward the Sisters who were still alive by the gate. I did a quick count. Had we really lost twenty? Twenty souls just gone from our Order? That fast?

  My hands shook, and I pulled my knees to my chest as Anne got off me to throw herself into the arms of all five of her Guards. Daniella collapsed into the waiting arms of hers. And Teagan, in the distance, hugged each of the Sisters she’d brought who still lived then wept into the shoulders of her Guards, one after another.

  I sat in the dirt.

  No one came for me. No one would.

  The ravens cawed first. They were the first sound I heard again in a world that had silenced. I rose to my feet.

  “Brother Reed.” I had no memories of him. Only what I had heard from Teagan. He was the raven with the white feather. The original raven. The soul who collected the very best souls and asked them to love a Sister. Together, with the true Sister Superior, they matched us. Kismet.

  The bird did not become a man. He stayed a bird, circling above, ever watching.

  “I would have loved my Guards. I would have. I’m so flawed. So… mediocre when it comes to powers, and I don’t want to be the Oracle. I cannot believe I agreed to it. But perhaps I had no choice. I would have loved them. Tell them, wherever they are in the universe, that I would have loved them. As best I could for as long as I could.”

  The spirits cried out, and I ignored them. I was not interested in duty.

  I had nothing but mess. No home. No things. No loves. Nothing. Just a broken house and a demon who had told me I would be blinded and ordered us to clean up his house.

  Why had divinity sent us here?

  I sunk back down. There would be lots of time to clean this up.

  Alexander came back first. He rushed at me, throwing his arms around me as I stood, staring at what I thought had been the kitchen. No one else was coming. How had he gotten here?

  I asked him, and he shook his head. “I ran. I was so scared. I heard about the wraiths. So I ran. But I didn’t get far. I couldn’t leave you here. You’re my family.”

  “I have Sisters, and we mean a lot to each other, but I’ve never had family. I’d like to be your family, Alexander.”

  He squeezed tighter. I needed that hug. Although I wished I didn’t have to ask, I was compelled to know. “Did you see Neil? Wayne? Gordon? Ren? Or Lennon?”

  “They took off, but I haven’t seen them since. The house is gone.” He spoke the obvious in the way only young children could.

  I nodded. “It is. We’ll try to rebuild it.”

  He squeezed my hand. “You will.”

  Where did this utter and complete faith in me come from? I’d done nothing to earn it. Yet, there it was given with no expectation of anything, except the hardest thing in the world which was that I should never let him down. Others had taught him—Anne, Daniella, and Teagan were gifted women. Did he recognize that we were alone together?

  The sounds of coming carriages caught my attention. Had the birds told them to come back? I walked forward. The Guards were building fires. Teagan would sleep in the guesthouse—she was pregnant—and Daniella’s girls would when they came back, too. Daniella would try to resist but we’d insist she join them. The rest of us would camp outside. I’d see if they had a bed for Alexander. His only home had just been leveled.

  I watched. Each person stepping out of the carriage was a relief. But none of them were my five. They hadn’t boarded the carriages, I knew that, so I didn’t know where the ridiculous hope of seeing their faces came from. They didn’t arrive.

  Mason walked over, placed a hand on my shoulder, and smiled at me before he made a fire. There was a rock nearby. I sat on it.

  Families were reuniting, and staff that was as trusted as family came back. Krystal plopped down next to me.

  “Despite the spirits hollering at Daniella’s daughters—they could hear them by the way—I wasn’t sure if you’d all be dead. Glad to see your face, Mika.”

  I smiled at her. Just because I was dead inside didn’t mean that I had to rain on everyone’s parade. “I’m glad to see your face, too. You missed Beelzebub.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Tell me.”

  11

  A sweet smell I couldn’t identify wafted through the air, waking me from my sleep. I sat up, the blanket I was wrapped in falling to the ground. Next to me, Krystal snored. I wondered if she was sick or if she’d always done that. It wasn’t like hearing Wayne snore. I didn’t know if I’d be able to get back to sleep. Still, I couldn’t identify the scent.

  After a second, like they came from the darkness itself, ten men walked toward me. They wore hoods to cover their faces, long, black coats, and black pants. No one around me stirred.

  What was happening? I got to my feet.

  They moved through darkness as though they’d been born for it, those ten.

  But they haven’t. They are ravens.

  That meant they were Guards, but they didn’t look like any I’d ever seen before in my life. Guards were always paired as five—took that many to keep us safe and that was how divinity designed our souls to connect. There were ten of them.

  “Why is she awake?” One of the Guards from the back spoke. “They were supposed to be sleeping.”

  A man from the front knelt down. “Nothing is ever certain with the Sisters. She’s awake.”

  “She’s powerful.” The same man from the back rushed forward. “Sister Superior said she is powerful.” He grabbed an unconscious Krystal from the ground. She didn’t move, her head lolling forward. “If you give us any trouble, I’ll kill her. You guys care about each other don’t you?”

  I put out my hands in front of me. I still didn’t know what these Guards wanted from me, but I wouldn’t have them hurt Krystal.

  “Stop.”

  The Guard in front of me turned around slowly to regard the one holding Krystal. I couldn’t see any of their faces. They were black coats and intense eyes, nothing more.

  “You’re going to want to set down the Sister right now, gently, without hurting her.”

  I backed up and hit a wall that was a strong body. Hands gripped my arms. “Don’t move, Sister. I have no wish to hurt you.”

  The scene in front of me continued. There were ten Guards, but they were always grouped in five. So what was I seeing now? Two different Guard groups and a power struggle? I still didn’t know what they wanted from me.

  My pulse was in my ears. Whatever this was, it couldn’t be good news. Strange men didn’t come in the middle of the night to have nice conversations. They’d already said Sister Superior, and I had to assume that wasn’t Anne, but Katrina. What was happening?

  “Maybe I’m not going to set down this Sister.” The Guard holding her shook her slightly, but Krystal didn’t wake. My poor friend—unconscious and I could do nothing for her—was being abused. “Maybe I’m going to hurt her if this so-called Sister doesn’t do as I say.”

  “If you lay one hand on that Sister and don’t set her down immediately, I will end you right here. Am I clear?” The man in front of me was dead serious. I could hear it in his voice. He would kill this other Guard, right here.

  I sucked in my breath. “Please, put her down.”

  Behind me, the man who held me, spoke. “Titus?”

  The man trying to help Krystal turned his head just slightly in acknowledgment. “Whatever happens, you get Sister Mika to Sister Superior, Jett.”

  “Right, One.”

  Okay, this was enough. Titus was going to kill this other Guard, and who knew what wo
uld happen to Krystal in the meantime.

  “Whatever you need from me, I’ll do, okay? Put her down. There is no need to hurt her. I am complying.”

  The no-named man nodded, but Titus spoke again. “You set her down, gently. If you hurt a hair on that Sister’s head, I’ll break your neck, John.”

  “Like your women unconscious, do you?” John, despite his response, set Krystal back down gently. I hoped she was okay and she wasn’t hurt from the shaking she endured.

  Another man who had hung back, stepped forward. “Titus, do you want me to go around and look for more stuff since we’re here?”

  “No, these are Sisters, Zeke. They’ve lost their way, but they are Sisters. We are following the instructions given to us by Sister Superior and nothing more.” He extended his hand to me. “Come with me.”

  I put my shaking hand in this stranger’s. Who they were didn’t matter, it was where they meant to bring me—and that was clearly to whatever Sister Katrina had in store for me.

  The slightest sound caught my ear, and I turned my head. Hiding behind a bush was Alexander. The little boy watched me with huge eyes. Whatever had kept me from being unconscious had done the same to him. I shook my head just slightly. He was not to do anything. He needed to stay here.

  I kept my back straight. “She thought it would take ten of you to take me? Even if I was out cold?”

  Titus didn’t answer my question. Instead, he stared at the rubble that was the house. “You never do know what will happen around Sisters. Watch your step, Sister Mika. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.” He threw a glance behind him? At Krystal? I wasn’t sure. But I was quickly hustled into a waiting carriage with no idea what was going to happen to me next.

  When the others woke, Alexander would tell them what happened. Maybe this was my dark time. Daniella said it all the time—we had to go through the dark to come out through the light. I hoped she was right and I was one of the lucky few who lived through the experience. What did divinity have planned for me now?

  I touched the window. For a brief time, I had been happy in this place, with five guys who hadn’t been for forever but made me think that such a thing would have been blissful in the small perfections of everyday life.