My heart pinches for a moment. A part of me wants to dive back into the grief and blame her for killing off Gage as God intended him to be. A part of me still wants to blame her for the sudden nightmare I’m immersed in, that the world and my people are drowning in. But not tonight.
I pull her to the side and the trio of tramps flicks their wrists and begins cooling themselves with black lace fans. That’s right, girls.
“It’s about to get hotter than hell,” I whisper as I look this monster in the eyes. Dominique Winters is truly another creature altogether who possessed Dominique’s body after the poor woman had a heart attack and died. In fact, her daughter, Melody Winters, was recently possessed—also after an untimely death—by another seventeenth century piece of crap called Cassandra Graham, and I’m willing to bet Dom’s boys, Ashbury and Cash, are truly throwbacks to another evil era as well.
She tries to step to my left and I block her at the pass. “What do you want?” Her eyes flash like purple flames.
“You run the apothecary. I’m looking to purchase something that can inflict mortal harm in the most painful manner possible. Think Madame Bovary.”
A warm laugh rumbles from behind. “Discussing nineteenth century French literature, Ms. Messenger? You never cease to impress me.” Marshall strides up next to her, those eyes of his set to cauldron red.
“Merry Christmas, Marshall.” I blink a quick smile his way before turning to the pale vampire of a woman before me. “Something that lingers. Something that I can get my hands on sooner than later. Time, space, and cost are of no obstacle. My traveling abilities are at your service.”
A sharp cackle emits from her as if I were regaling her with my comedic abilities instead. “No need to travel far. I have what you’re looking for.” Her eyes widen. “But I’m not a fool. When I see a bear trap, I tend to avoid it. There is vengeance in your eyes and I’m not interested.”
“The vengeance isn’t for you. In fact, I forgive you for the things you were forced to do to secure your own standing. If it weren’t you, it would have been someone else. I’m not a fool either. This I know is true.” A roar of laughter breaks out from somewhere to my left and I can’t shake the feeling as if I were being openly mocked. “Funny how life works, isn’t it, Dominique? You give me what I want. You have my blessing with Demetri.”
She gasps with delight, but I don’t stick around. I thread my arm through Marshall’s and take off into the crowd. “You made love to me,” I say without giving him the honor of looking up into those haughty with lust eyes. That pleasant vibratory hum buzzes from his body to mine, and it feels surreal with this level of rage percolating within me. I’m one spark away from blowing up the planet. Not even Marshall’s cool vibes can temper me.
“It sounds as if you have pleasant dreams, Ms. Messenger. I’m flattered you think of me so fondly. I am, however, an innocent man.”
A bout of laughter bursts from my own throat as I look up at him—my anger still flickering and breathing, a very real living being rising up inside of me. How I love hatred. Its dangerous borders hold me and cradle me and tell me that I have the power at this, my darkest hour. Yes, this would be that horrible moment in my life. Gage and Chloe in my face, with my boys, in a room full of Paragon past and present. They know no shame. They hold zero regard for me. Gage has been lumped with Chloe in that respect. He no longer deserves to be held on his own merit.
“You are no man, Marshall, and we both know it. Feel free to visit my dreams anytime you want. I’m through with relationships, but I’m not lying down and dying. I will take care of my bodily needs with whom I please. No strings.” I spot Ellis and Giselle and free myself from Marshall’s grasp as I head on over.
“Skyla”—Ellis pulls me in and holds me in his solid embrace—“Merry Christmas, Messenger.” Never have I been so glad that my friends still call me by my maiden name. If anything brings comfort to me right now, it’s that eternal echo, that fragile connection to my father. I would do anything to have him here.
“Same to the two of you.” I pull back and examine sweet, innocent Giselle with her Gage-like features. Giselle died as a toddler, but my mother gifted her Emerson Kragger’s body, and my mother gave her dimples just like the ones that grace Gage Oliver’s face.
“How could you do this?” Giselle’s features crumble. Her lips tremble as tears stain her eyes a brilliant shock of red. “You let Chloe steal my brother away, and now everything is different. It’s terrible! I don’t like seeing her face instead of yours. She’s miserable, and she hates me. She only pretends to like me. She’s mean, Skyla, and you did this to me!”
“Ellis”—my entire body hums with an undercurrent of rage—“take Giselle someplace safe if you want her to live to see Christmas morning.”
A deep voice shouts my name from behind once again.
Ellis frowns at Giselle as he wraps a protective arm around her. “Go easy on her, Skyla. It’s been a mind-bender ever since we bumped into them.” He leans in, those glossy eyes of his pinned over mine. “Let’s get our shit together and fight like hell to fix this. I’m not waiting for spring, or summer, or for whatever perfect formula you think we need. There has to be something we can do now.”
“There is. As soon as I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.”
Ellis and Giselle dissolve into the crowd and I turn to find Ezrina and Nev looking dapper, along with baby Alice in all her curly redheaded glory. Ezrina and Alice have on matching deep forest green velvet dresses with the neckline bejeweled in black sparkling stones. Nev has on a suit with a tie patterned with mistletoe. We exchange the appropriate holiday greetings as Alice fights to be let down.
“No, you don’t, wee one.” Ezrina gives the girl a brisk pat on the bottom. “Mind yourself, there are far too many people for me to keep track of you.”
Alice looks my way and bites the air between us as if she were feral.
“Feisty,” I say. I like that.
“We’ll be leaving soon,” Ezrina informs me with that ever-sober expression of hers. Ezrina is wearing Chloe Bishop’s OG coat of flesh, and Chloe is wearing Ezrina’s. And for a brief moment, it gives me the tiniest pleasure to know that Chloe’s own body wasn’t lucky enough to be present when Gage took her. Although it matters not. The body is but a glove. Chloe was present and accounted for in every important way, feeling everything he was willing to gift her.
I lean in. “We need to press ahead with hiding the markers. I’m afraid we’ve run out of time. Emily says the only way we’ll revert the nightmare we’re in is to utilize the enemy’s plan against him.”
Nev’s chest bucks with a dull laugh. “It’s genius. We ourselves adopt their strategy. And knowing Master Wesley, it is a good one.”
I can’t help but shed a devilish smile because he didn’t credit Gage. I like that he’s already been demoted in the eyes of my people as second best to Wes. In some twisted, dark way, I’m rooting for Wes to be the leader of that demonic league—for Wes to usurp both Gage and Demetri in their dark authority.
“Skyla,” that deep, booming voice finally catches up to me, and I turn to find Logan and Coop. Logan’s chest is palpitating as if he ran a marathon. He looks resplendent in jeans and a flannel, ever the average man who shines like a god. Those amber eyes of his are wild with rage that almost matches up with mine. “You say the word and I’ll get the boys. We can go to Whitehorse, the Landons’, anywhere but here.”
“No. I have to do this. It’s happening and I’m not running from anything anymore.” I pull both Logan and Coop in for a quick embrace. “Merry Christmas.”
“And on that note.” Ezrina pecks Alice with a kiss. “I think we’ll get this one home where she can be herself.”
“Don’t leave. Santa’s coming and Alice won’t want to miss it,” Logan implores. He shoots a quick glance my way and I can feel him saying something, asking me to read between the lines, to trust him. There is a very real reason he wants them to stay, and I’m
pretty sure a surly man in a red suit has nothing to do with it.
Ezrina pecks another kiss to Alice’s rosy cheek. “Fine. We’ll be out back. It’s far too stuffy in here. A breeding ground for germs.” They start to take off and a surge of desperation hits me.
“Ezrina.” A part of me understands that my mother is not the deadly tool in my arsenal. It’s this woman right there. “Aside from the markers. I’m open to suggestions on how to take down the enemy. Something unconventional, something heinous. Nothing is off the table.” I take another step forward and pick up her hand. I’m going to kill Chloe. And if she cannot die, I’m willing to make a sport of having her try. Both her host body and Ezrina herself are Celestra, so I have no doubt she heard.
She cranes her neck toward the rear of the room past the fireplace, deep into the crowd of bodies, and a line of heat bisects my stomach. That’s where they are. I can feel them there. Feel the boys.
“That is my body.” Ezrina meets her ice-cold eyes with mine.
“And she’s defiled it with wickedness,” I say.
“Pity.”
Nev steps in. “Skyla, you realize we can’t mix insanity and schemes. We stoked the flames of your mother once and can’t possibly go along with whatever you’re filling Rina’s head with. We have a child, Skyla. We will offer our full services to aiding your people, but any personal vengeance is yours alone.” He gives a curt nod as they speed off.
I turn to find Coop and Logan with their arms folded tightly across their chests like twin bookends.
“What?”
Coop’s lips twitch. “I don’t know what that was about, but I’ve got a gift for you that might cheer you up.” He glances to Logan. “Both of you.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense,” I say. “I need a little pinhole of light in this dark night.”
He glances around and shakes his head just a bit before stepping in close. “I came across a research paper online about a group of teenagers in Norway who contracted a rare tropical virus while on spring break one year.”
Logan and I exchange a quick glance.
“Coop”— I nod—“bright light, remember?”
“I’m getting there.” He sheds an easy grin and looks impossibly like Logan. My heart breaks that he can smile at all knowing how Wes is defiling his wife. “The virus was so disruptive to their systems, it not only nearly damaged their major organs, but it scarred their cellular structure.”
My lips part as my jaw unhinges. “Cooper Flanders.” I can hardly breathe. “I think you just gave me and our people a gift that will keep on giving.”
“Shit.” Logan leans in. “Then that’s where we look next. Ezrina was trying to find a cure when all along she needed to find a disease.”
I look to Coop. “What happened to the teenagers?”
“They’re all dead. It took them down in days.” He glares at something or someone near the entry. “I’ll be back.”
Coop takes off and Logan steps in close, our eyes constantly surveying the crowd as if we were expecting another government sting operation, but we both know we’re expecting something far worse—Gage and the demon he’s leashed himself to.
“Virus.” His brows tweak a moment. “You realize the enemy would love nothing more than to watch us kill ourselves in an effort to try to survive.”
“Yes, well, they say the planet is due for another purging. I say we swing at this beast from another angle entirely. Kiss Wes and his people with something that makes Ebola look like a summer cold, while those who side with us enjoy our inoculations. Might I suggest something painful that makes them bleed from every orifice.”
“That’s messy. And torturous. You do realize half our friends and family are lumped in with them.”
I make a face. “To quote Ezrina, pity.”
“And, of course, the poor humans. They wouldn’t stand a chance. And after we’ve killed off the human race, I suppose that would make us the evil ones by default.”
“I tried to save everyone, and look where that landed us.” I’m about to enter into a tirade about the injustice of the wicked and how they always seem to have the damn upper hand when ironically a hand itself falls over my shoulder and Logan’s, but before we can process what’s happening, we’re being escorted out back and into the cool Paragon mist by none other than the host with the most ghosts himself, Marshall Dudley.
“Hate to break up the pity party.” He gives a sly wink my way. An odd confirmation that Marshall is indeed always listening in on my conversations. “But the heavenly gentry just arrived, and there are a few souls I thought you might be interested in seeing before they once again became the dearly departed.”
My adrenaline spikes, and every ounce of hope I’ve ever felt in my life skyrockets through me as Marshall leads us toward his enormous barn. A blaze of magnificent light bursts from its every seam in colors of lavender, cerulean blue, and amber shine like the spectral sight they are. As soon as we set foot inside, a sparkling fog envelops us and we’re met with a wall of chattering bodies dressed gloriously in rich velour and brocade, and yet each person here has a faded appeal to them. Each person here is only partially visible, their bodies ingloriously immaterial.
“Oh, for shit’s sake,” I hiss. “Marshall, I can see right through these people. You can’t let them out of this barn. You have humans in the house who won’t know what to make of this.”
Logan moans like he might be sick as he looks to his left and I follow his gaze, only to be met with an entire handful of the celestial beings hovering four feet off the ground.
“Dudley,” Logan growls. “Fix this.”
“What’s to fix?” Marshall crosses his arms, resting his chin on his hand in observation. “I think we’re through with pretenses, Ms. Messenger. No walls, no cumbersome bodies to hoist around. It really is a freeing sensation. Besides, it’s your mother’s brainchild.”
I’m almost afraid to ask. “Which mother?”
“Both really. Lizbeth dreamed up the idea of a phantasmic Christmas, and Candace brought the phantasms. So you see—it’s quite the collective effort.”
“No more pretenses,” I say under my breath. “I feel that to my bones.”
A woman in a mint green ball gown floats to the ceiling like a helium balloon and then right through it. A small crowd migrates toward the door, floating ever so higher as they hit the exit.
“Oh God.” My stomach churns just watching the gentry disperse as if there were something malevolent chasing them out of the room, and then I see it. The sound of a screaming meteor, something sharp and completely supernatural, eardrum rattling, bone-shattering screams pass us as the light in the center of the barn magnifies to inhuman levels. Standing in a semi-circle, completely absorbed in a conversation of their own are Jack and Julie Oliver—Logan’s parents—and mine, Candace and Nathan Messenger.
“Daddy.” It comes out lower than a whisper, afraid I might startle myself and awake from this glorious dream.
His face lights up when he sees me, and I’m on him in a moment, my arms snug around his body. And unlike those phantasms, he feels and looks every bit real.
“Skyla.” He buries a kiss in my hair, and I can feel the warmth from his mouth on my scalp. He pulls back with those happy-to-see-me-yet-veiled-in-grief watery blue eyes. “I’m sorry that you’re having such a hard time of it. Understand that this is your—”
“Destiny,” I finish the word for him. “I know. And for the first time, I really accept this. I suppose it’s too late now. Things aren’t going as planned but—”
“They will.” He steals the words from me with a smile.
My mother offers an affable nod my way. “The Olivers are embracing, my dear.” Her lips flicker with a pained smile. I glance back to see Logan and his parents enjoying a spirited reunion before smirking back at my mother.
“Normally, I’m not that enthused to see you.” No use in skirting around the truth. “But knowing what waits for me back in that house, I ca
n use a hug from my mommy.” I flick my fingers, and Candace floats over with a chortling laugh as she wraps her arms around me while looking every bit like my double. Her body is more or less an idea at the moment, but those vibrations of hers penetrate to my core and it indeed feels like love.
Logan steps back and wraps an arm around my shoulder as we take the four of them in.
Logan’s mother, Judy, has strawberry blonde locks curled near the bottom and the ringlets sit neatly around her shoulders. She’s young. My God, she looks younger than me, and she’s a stunner with her smooth features and sharp eyes. His father is a looker, a younger version of Barron with a little Logan and his brother, Liam, mixed in for good measure.
Logan lifts a hand in their direction. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Merry Christmas!” I trill while hopping on my toes as if it just occurred to me why we might be standing in the same airspace on such a festive night.
The tips of my mother’s hair spark and flicker with the threat of flames. “Yes, the birth of our Savior is a blessed occasion, but we’re here for an equally blessed occasion.” She pulls my father in for a partial embrace. “We’re here to officiate your union, Skyla.”
“What union?” Anything chipper left in me up and disappears. “As in the state of the union? You mean the state of the Factions?”
Logan blows out a breath as his arm falls to his side. “I think she means our union, Skyla.”
Judy’s face brightens with an incandescent glow. “That’s right! It’s your wedding day.” She claps her hands together as if she were praising the heavens. “You don’t know how much I wished to be at the last covenant the two of you partook in, but we were told to choose wisely.” She points to Candace and wrinkles her nose adorably. “We could only witness one.”
All Hail the King (Celestra Forever After Book 6) Page 10
