It was a tight fit, but we all took a seat, and in the end, Eve nestled on my lap, and I wasn’t about to complain about that, was I?
Curling my arms around her was pretty fun, considering she kept wriggling and trying to sit upright.
“Stop fighting it,” Reed teased her under his breath, and since we were beside him, she tensed, but didn’t concede defeat until she huffed and sagged into me.
“Much better,” I joked, squeezing her for a second.
There was a twinkle in Avalina’s eyes that told me she was amused, but Bartlett’s stony features made paper look expressive.
Considering this was Frazer’s show, I let him take point. I wasn’t really sure where we were even going with this though. How could a pair of bookworms help us with what was going on with Eve’s body and mind?
“In the pictures you sent, they were on the girl, yes?” Bartlett asked, tilting his head to the side. When Eve nodded, he hummed. “And what triggered this manifestation?”
“Look, we’re not interested in why, we want to know what they mean,” Frazer clarified, his tone commanding as he glared at Bartlett. He was coming on hot and heavy, but I understood. With academic sorts, you had to take control of a situation. They were more interested in the whys than anything else sometimes, and we didn’t have answers for them.
‘Umm, yeah, we walked through a pair of special gates that are actually a portal and she got an electric shock and turned into a Christmas tree afterward.’ That was really going to go down well.
“Sometimes to understand what something means, you need to know the root of its appearance,” Avalina stated, her tone calm. Harmonious. It had me tipping my head to look at her, and where on Bartlett’s face there was no expression, hers was lively with curiosity. Her eyes were sparkling as though she were happy, and she’d begun edging forward in her seat as though she were unable to contain herself.
In all honesty, it gave me the creeps. What the fuck did she have to be happy about?
Wondering if this was some kind of trap and we’d just walked straight into it, I questioned everything we’d been aiming toward for the past two weeks. Once we’d made sure Eve knew we were traveling toward an end goal that might help explain the glow, the lights on her body had dimmed substantially. As though they accepted the fact that we weren’t ignoring them, and we were being proactive about it too. Because, yeah, light energy had feelings and knew whether to get pissy or not.
I ran a hand over my head, inadvertently jostling Eve on my knee. My fingers brushed her arm and the unnatural heat coming off her made me wonder if she was lit up again. The thick plaid shirt she wore—one of Nestor’s this time—covered her ink up like a charm, but I was certain when she’d been glowing before, it hadn’t given off any heat.
“Well, we don’t know why the ink appeared,” Frazer replied to the professor, and it wasn’t that much of a lie either. We didn’t have a fucking clue why Eve had reacted to the portal when none of us had. “Just that it did.”
Bartlett grunted. “May we see the tattoo?”
His irritation with us was almost amusing, and I had to admit that, for a couple who specialized in creepy shit, they didn’t give off weird vibes. Nor did their office. Perhaps I was prejudging them, but I’d anticipated skulls and shit everywhere, and old books tossed in cobwebs. Not an office that would have made a prince proud.
I helped push Eve onto her feet, copping a sneaky feel while I was there, and though she caught my eye and promised death with that glance, she made no other mention of the way I’d squeezed her gorgeous ass cheek.
Underneath her shirt, she wore a simple tank top. The scooped neckline showed too much of her tits—a complaint I was only making because she wore the flannel to cover them for the professors—and thin straps that revealed every ounce of the newly marked flesh.
When she began unfastening the buttons, I was certain the professors were going to start salivating which, yeah, was definitely odd. But when she tossed her shirt at me, revealing her ripe curves in the white tank, her delicious ass in the yoga pants she continuously wore, Avalina and Bartlett appeared to stop salivating. If anything, their eyes rounded, and a tremor whispered through them as they gaped at my woman.
Bartlett remained in place, but Avalina got to her feet.
That he stayed, lessened my tension some, but after last night, I realized how fucking stupid of me that was. I’d watched Eve use a leg as a javelin… All while her men had been frozen in a stasis worthy of Star Trek.
Avalina might be deadlier than her husband for all we knew.
I sat up, readied myself for any attack, and saw that my brothers were all as on edge as me. It was scary to think, but Eve represented so much for us now that I knew we were going to drive her crazy for the rest of our lives. She was our walking world, and I wasn’t altogether certain she knew that yet.
With an ease of movement that belied her apparent age, Avalina approached Eve and whispered, “May I?”
Eve nodded and raised her arm so the woman could better see the markings. Avalina began to trace the ink, and though Eve shivered as though the move tickled her, she didn’t pull back or jerk away, so I relaxed some.
As the professor studied the ink, I frowned when she began to speak in a language that sounded vaguely reminiscent of tongues but wasn’t. It was kind of like speaking English but listening to Shakespeare. You recognized it, but some of the words were just weird.
The thing with tongues was that it was about our integration into whichever culture deemed necessary. It was like an internal translator, letting us speak the local language, while remaining impossible to understand when we wanted to maintain our secrets when we spoke amongst each other. No one knew of our language outside of Caelum, so that Avalina was whispering it?
I shot to my feet and grabbed Eve, hauling her back against me as I shoved the shirt at her. “You’re from Caelum,” I grated out, trying to sense if the husband and wife duo were creatures or not, but I could discern very little about them. They were odd. And that was the kindest way to put it.
The others had my back as we began edging out of the room. The professors had answers we needed and storming out wasn’t an option, but we didn’t have to leave ourselves open to an attack either.
The instant we began backing away, Avalina’s hands moved into the ‘white flag’ position. Bartlett pushed to his feet and moved behind her, cupping her shoulders, and keeping his own hands on display at the same time.
“You don’t feel like creatures,” Samuel rasped, his tone thick with confusion.
“That’s because we’re not,” Bartlett replied, then his chin dropped. “We’re much more than that.”
4
Eve
In my life, I’d experienced that sensation of ‘coming home’ far too few times to count. Honestly, that made me unhappy, but it also disturbed me on a visceral level that I felt it when Bartlett looked at me.
He didn’t sneer at me, didn’t look at me lewdly. There was great interest in his eyes, but there was also something that made me feel connected to him. Like he knew me already. Like I knew him.
“What are you?” I whispered, and I surprised Stefan by jerking out of his arms and pushing myself forward before any of my men could stop me.
They were all overprotective, and sometimes, I liked that. Sometimes, when that other side of my soul wasn’t in command, I needed that. But on occasions like these, where I felt on fire with the strangeness in me?
No.
I didn’t need protecting.
It was like my Supergirl persona kicked into high gear or something, and I had no other way of describing it, because it was as perplexing as it sounded.
“What are you?” I repeated, but this time, I was so much closer to them. Avalina was unusual. I’d sensed that from the start. When they’d approached us at the ferry terminal, I’d known the pair were more than they seemed, but it was Bartlett who felt right to me.
Who felt like someone
I needed to know.
With my repeated question, I aimed my focus at Bartlett, not Avalina. While I felt sure she had some answers to questions I might have, Bartlett was like me. The only trouble was, I wasn’t sure what I was, so how I knew that about him, I couldn’t say.
“We are the first.”
“The first?” Dre scoffed. “The first what?”
I blinked at his voice, and realized then how quiet he’d been since we’d left the yacht. Heck, since that stupid kiss I’d instigated back in his cactus garden at Caelum. I knew he was flailing, trying to find his place, but we all were, and it wasn’t aided by him intentionally keeping his distance from me.
That needed to stop.
Now.
The thought was a roar in my head, and I gulped and tried to rein my feelings back in so I could focus. I didn’t need to be thinking about Dre when there was a man here who had answers to questions I’d never even thought about forming.
“The first of everything,” Bartlett murmured. My gaze drifted to his hands, which cupped his wife’s shoulders. I stared at the strong knuckles and the long fingers that were covered in youthful skin. There were no age spots, no wrinkles.
I glanced at his face, saw the lack of lines there too, and couldn’t stop myself from asking, “How old are you?”
“As old as time itself,” Avalina responded, drawing my attention her way.
I blinked at her. “What does that even mean?”
“Time is a relative concept,” Bartlett explained. “It matters only to humans. Animals register the ticking of the clock only in the passage of days. Of the sun rising and setting, the moon soaring and falling. To us, each moment counts, and that is how old we are.”
“Anyone else feel like they’re in a National Treasure movie?” Reed groused, but I ignored him even though the shuffling of feet behind me told me that the others were in a semblance of agreement.
“I think you should start from the beginning,” I whispered, staring straight into Bartlett’s eyes, and not letting him hedge on this, not letting him shift focus.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” he intoned, his lips gently curving as he made the mocking statement. One I’d heard so many times over the years in Bible study back at the compound, one that resonated with me on a different level because of what he was saying.
“Wait,” I whispered, “You are the first of everything…” Shaking my head, I continued, “No. It can’t be.”
“Can’t be what?” Reed demanded, and he stormed over to me, coming to hold me as Bartlett held Avalina. Having him at my back was a welcome sensation, and it filled me with strength.
Bartlett tipped his head to the side as he cast a glance at the men in the room, then focused back on me. “Eve came first, not Adam,” he said matter-of-factly. “She was not born of my bone, but she was the life giver in more ways than she just helped bear the next generations.”
My throat felt thick. “Why are you telling us this?” I’d asked him to explain, but what he was saying made no sense.
“So, you understand, of course.” He pursed his lips. “I sensed you before. Sensed you when I was in the States a few months ago.” He laughed a little. “There are so few of us, and even though it puts us at risk of coming under Caelum’s umbrella, I had to help you.”
“What do you mean? You’re not working with Caelum?” Reed asked, tone insistent, his arms bunching as tension filled him. His Hell Hound was in full force at the moment, and while I could have soothed him, all my focus was on what Bartlett was telling me. What he wasn’t saying even though he was talking, spilling words that were couched in shadows when I needed the spotlight on the truth.
“No.” Avalina’s laugh was a small tinkle. “Though Nicholas is one of our sons.”
I could feel my mates’ bewilderment as Avalina spoke of the principal of Caelum.
“If you’re related, then why don’t you work with Caelum?” I queried.
“Because our place is not to interfere with the lives of the many,” Bartlett intoned, and though he came across as a pompous jerk, I knew they were words he’d had to utter often, and each time had pained him.
Those shadows were back. In his eyes. In his heart. I sensed them and hurt with him at their presence.
“But Nicholas can?” Eren asked, and he was the first of my men to take a seat on the sofa once more. I wasn’t surprised. Eren was the calmest of us all, the least hotheaded. Within minutes of him taking a seat, the others joined him, sitting down for story time with the ‘Elders.’
Unlike the others, I didn’t. I remained standing. I wasn’t sure why I needed to, just knew that if I was standing, it would be easier to run…
“Nicholas shouldn’t, but there are many things we shouldn’t do and yet we do.” Avalina shrugged. “I understand his ethos. It is one I wish I could involve myself in, but we don’t. We can’t. Bartlett contacting Merinda was an issue, but I understood why. We come across Jannah once in a blue moon.”
“Jannah?” I repeated, frowning at the word, one that was completely new to me.
Bartlett smiled. “What you and I are.” He waved a hand that encompassed the men and murmured, “They are majnūn. They are the flowers from our seeds. Jannah are God’s children themselves—eight creatures housed in one soul.”
My mouth felt so dry that it hurt to lick my lips. “God’s children?” I squeaked.
He nodded. “When Eve was born, Adam was God’s gift to her. She had a world to settle,” he said, squeezing his wife’s arm, “a world to populate. She couldn’t do that alone, and so Adam was born.”
“Why do you speak in the third person?” Reed asked, his voice low.
“Because those people died a long time ago. The people standing here today are Avalina and Bartlett. We’ve lived nine lives, led nine different incarnations. Adam and Eve were the first, but these are our last.”
“What do you mean?” Eren questioned, sitting up and making the leather Chesterfield beneath him creak as he did so.
“This was our last chance. When we die this time, we will die for good.”
There was no sadness in Bartlett’s tone, not even resignation. If anything, I believed I heard excitement, and I supposed that made sense.
God only knew—literally—how long this man and woman had lived, and I could only imagine how tired they were.
“I think you should begin at the beginning,” Frazer suggested, his tone commanding but polite. I hadn’t heard him get up, but when I felt his hand on my elbow, I didn’t pull away.
“Will you sit, Eve?” Bartlett asked, his eyes and attention wholly on me. “We mean you no harm. If anything, we have answers for you.”
Because I sensed the truth in him, I allowed Frazer to tug me onto his lap. Unlike Stefan, he didn’t cop a feel, as Samuel called it, but he did hold me tight in his grasp. That was good, though, because I felt as though I was on the brink of shattering into a thousand pieces and like only he and the rest of my mates were the glue that could keep me together.
Was I surprised when Bartlett stepped back from Avalina, grabbed her desk chair, and brought it over so it was closer to us? Not really. What did surprise me was when he hauled Avalina onto his lap as Frazer had me, and she snuggled into him, as happy as a cat in front of a fire.
Bartlett cleared his throat as he slipped his arm around his wife’s waist and said, “God gave the life giver—Eve—the Jannah—myself—as a means of creating a world where we could all live. I was born with the ability to grant her the things she needed most. While she might believe she needs a pair of Louboutins now, she doesn’t, and that is why she won’t receive it. The wishes are God-granted, and He decides what is gifted and what isn’t.
“However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I even knew about this ability, Eve and I lived in the Garden of Eden. We were happy, content, but as is the way of humans, we grew bored and unappreciative.”
Avalina whispered, �
��I fell into temptation, and that was the beginning of the end.”
Bartlett rubbed his wife’s arm. “We were born to fall, Ava. You know that.” Her jaw tightened, and she turned her face away from us. Her guilt was as prevalent now as though she’d eaten the apple yesterday, and not thousands of years or more earlier. “The second Eve ate the apple, she introduced Satan into her body. We didn’t know that at the time, were just aware that life had forever changed when we were tossed out of the Garden.
“And though we were terrified,” he admitted, shuddering, his fear a real thing, “when Eve wished for the sweet nectar of juice to quench her thirst as we baked under the sun’s rays for the first time in our existence, it appeared. Right before us.”
My brow puckered. “Wait. So, God knew you were going to be tempted and made you Jannah so you’d have something to safeguard the pair of you outside of Eden?” I inquired softly, wondrous at the generosity inherent in that act. God’s knowledge that man and woman were born to fall hadn’t stopped him from gifting them a safety net of incredible proportions.
“Yes. It didn’t take us long to realize what was happening. We wished to return home, back to Eden, but that didn’t work. We wished to return to the moment before Eve ate the apple, nor did that work. But when we wished for shelter from the sun and water to quench our thirst? A river was sprung, and trees began to grow along its banks.” His tone grew hoarse with the memories. “Those days were difficult. It’s hard to believe that we survived them, even if that was what we were born to do. To become survivors, to create the world under God’s hand.” He swallowed thickly. “We created our first home. It was remarkably like Eden, but could never be as beautiful. We realized that we could live, that we had food in our bellies and water for our thirst. The wishes didn’t dry up, but they became more specific. We were never allowed to rest on our laurels with them.”
Ava pulled a face. “What he means is we couldn’t just wish for the oxen that had been born from our wish, to die and be butchered for us. We had to work for it. Once we had the means of surviving, of creating life, we could no longer rely upon Adam’s abilities.”
Nine Lives: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part THREE Page 11