by A. K. Koonce
“We have to go, Lucas. What are you doing?” I yell against the thrashing wind, trying to bring him back to this hellish reality.
His eyes hover over the arch for only a second before glancing back to me. His gaze bores into mine for a moment before he looks away, blinking rapidly. His lips are turned down, his emotions pulling at his features.
“I can’t go back there, man. I’m already gone.” He smiles … almost. It’s the same boyish smile I feel like I’ve known all my life. He adjusts his blue beanie and wipes his hand down his face as he meets my eyes again. “There’s nothing in that place for me. Nothing good ever laid on that side of the portal. Not for me. I’m not like you guys; that portal wouldn’t accept me even if I tried. I had my time there.”
Alexandra clutches my hand tightly in hers as a new and entirely different kind of pain shoots through me. Sorrow. A feeling of loss and emptiness cuts into my chest.
Lucas walks slowly toward us, pausing in the center of the room between the white and black arches that are also swirling in time with the current in the sky.
“You guys go. Live a life worth living. You found love, find happiness … or some shit like that.” He’s breathing hard like he’s rounding his courage, looking at me like he’ll never see me again.
Because he won’t.
“You’re just going to stay here and let the sky fall in around you?” I ask, my voice wavering slightly as he walks backward toward the blinding white archway.
But it already did. The sky fell in around him once before and he still lived on.
He smirks at me, giving me his smart ass look that always grows under my skin and sinks right into my heart. I swallow hard thinking about the choice he’s making as he walks backward the last few steps, his arms raised from his sides, palms up, like he’s got nothing to lose. His white sneakers teeter on the edge of the archway, balancing between this life and the next.
“I’ve already lived one life of hell, Rem. I can only hope to live on in peace.”
His face is illuminated in a pale golden hue as he stands before the arch of light. The arch hums behind him, growing brighter and brighter the closer he comes to it, an impatient hum sounding from within. The floor shakes and cracks beneath our feet. I try to etch his serene, ethereal face into my memory, to keep him there with me a little longer, just before he free falls backward into the light, disappearing entirely.
My heart stutters in my chest, shooting pain right through me. The air is knocked from my lungs. I can’t breathe.
He’s gone.
“Remy, we have to go,” Alexandra says, my eyes never leaving the place where Lucas stood just moments ago.
Alexandra pulls at my arm. Chunks of stonework fall to the ground around our feet, the wind blowing pieces of debris into my damp eyes. I stumble backward, trying to find the logic to listen to her.
I struggle to breathe, my lungs heavy with an emotion I don’t usually feel. Lucas’ voice and laughter, his decades of bad jokes, swarm my mind, gutting me painfully open with his memory. For the last hundred years or so he was the only person who made this place bearable.
Now he’s gone.
Suddenly, Alexandra pulls me through the crumbling archway just as the air halts around us. As the dark, crumbling world of Resurrection Island fades away for the last time, I remember the one serious thing Lucas ever told me:
The best day of his life was the day he died – New Year’s Eve, December 31st, 2016.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
We Deserve More
Remy
I land hard on the other side, and my shoulder cracks against the clean tile floor. Alexandra lies beside me with a worried look on her dirty face. Alcohol smothers the air around us, and yelling and screams are heard in the next room, tearing the feeling of triumph from us before it even starts.
We left one hell just so I could portal us to another.
Cheering, laughter, and music can be heard down the curving staircase. The base of a pop song filters through the enormous house. A muted celebration is just downstairs. The world beyond these walls feels cut off and distant from us. The hallway we stand in is shrouded in darkness, shadows and the feeling of fear begin to pool around us.
I stand carefully against the glossy floor, my sandy boots littering the hallway with every step I take.
“Where are we?” Alexandra whispers, pushing against the floor to stand at my side.
I glance around, not knowing fully where we are, but knowing exactly where I’m going. It takes less than a second to realize I’ve been here once before.
But this time he won’t die.
“Stay here,” I say, touching her lower back as something crashes to the floor in the room next to us. The noise is followed by the sound of glass breaking. I take an anxious step toward the door. “If anything …” I pause, my mind thrashing through worst case scenarios with each passing second. “If you hear gunfire, I want you to run.”
She nods, her wide eyes looking around the lavishly decorated hallway. Where would she go? How could I put her in this situation?
I swallow hard, realizing, how important the next few moments are.
I pull my gun from its holster, moving cautiously to minimize the noise of my steps.
My heart hammers madly against my ribs, trying to knock sense into me with every beat. I’ve never done this before. Not really. Everyone I’ve ever saved was already dead. There was no threat to my life or theirs. Everything could go very wrong in the next few minutes.
I push the heavy wooden door open with my boot; it opens without a sound, revealing a shadowed office and the two people I knew would be inside.
A thin boy lies on the floor in a heap of shattered glass, shielding his head from the attacker above him. Cuts and bruises swell the kids face, disfiguring him beyond recognition. A spreading puddle of blood covers the glossy tile floor around him. His shuddering and huddled form makes him appear years younger than he really is. An older man kicks him hard in the stomach repeatedly, the boy's arms doing little to shield his body from the blows now.
“I said get the fuck up, boy. I told you what would happen the next time you smirked at me like that again, didn’t I? Didn’t I?” He yells down at the shaking kid. “Get the fuck up.” He swings a fire poker above his head, aiming for his son on the ground.
“Stop,” I say calmly, my aim focused on the man before me.
The older man stops in his tracks, bringing his gaze to me. Bronze eyes, so similar to the smiling eyes of my friend, meet mine. But his are not smiling. They’re blazing with anger.
I search out the grandfather clock in the corner of the dimly lit room. If I’m not incredibly careful, I’ll run into myself. Hundreds of years ago I came here at the stroke of midnight and returned to the Island with my best friend.
He was dead then. He won’t be tonight.
“Who are you? How’d you get into my fucking house, boy?” the man asks belligerently.
He’s really got a thing for calling us boy.
Lucas doesn’t move from his place at his father’s feet. If I didn’t know any better I’d think he was already dead. His chest rises and falls like he might just be sleeping in the warm blood that blankets him.
“I’m not a boy, actually. My names Remington Adair, once proclaimed King of England, Savior and Survivor in a way.” The titles I hold harness a long, long lifetime of memories that I’ll never forget for the rest of my days.
He narrows his glossy eyes on me, allowing me to speak as he assesses the gun in my hand.
“Get the fu—”
I cock the gun, the subtle and satisfying clicking noise make his words fall away.
“I’m a reaper. I collect the souls of the dead.” I speak as ominously as possible as I take intentionally slow steps toward him. “In the next,” I check the clock once more, “five minutes you’re going to return to your ridiculous party downstairs, chat, laugh, and get more shit faced than you already are. You won’t return
to this room. Until after midnight.” The barrel of my gun digs roughly into his chest, the bullet closer to his heart now, just inches from taking his life. It takes all my strength not to pull the trigger. “Do you understand?”
He nods as his wide fear-stricken eyes study my face for a long moment. He swallows and takes a shaking breath when he looks down at Lucas’ unconscious body, as if he just stumbled upon his son in this near death condition. My jaw clenches, fucking hating how sad he looks right now. He doesn’t get to mourn Lucas. I slam the end of the gun further into his chest, and he immediately starts moving his feet. I follow close behind him, pausing at the door and watch as he descends the staircase.
My heart fumbles as I scan the empty hall. Alexandra’s nowhere in sight. I grip the door, flinging it wide open, looking left and then right in the darkness. Out of the shadows, hidden safely away, lingers the princess. My lungs expand with a breath of relief, and she gives me a tense smile.
I hurry back into the room, grabbing what appears to be a dissolution of marriage document. I take the first ink pen I find and scribble quickly across the front page in sloppy, nearly illegible handwriting.
I fold the heavy document in half, checking the time again as I lay the paper on Lucas’ chest. His breath is slow, but he is breathing. Then I do the hardest thing I’ve had to do in all my life.
I walk away from him.
I close the door behind me, pausing with my palm on the cold handle for several seconds. Alexandra gives me a strange look, her brows pinching together. I know she isn’t sure why we’re here, but she takes my hand in hers anyway. Trusting me completely.
Music streams all around us as we wait in the shadows of the long hall. Downstairs people begin chanting a countdown.
Eight, seven, six, five …
I hear heavy footsteps on the other side of the door and I hold my breath, hoping the other me will take Lucas. The kid will die if he doesn’t go. His sorry excuse of a father hit an internal organ. A second strike of the fire poker was what initially killed Lucas all those years ago, but I stopped that from happening tonight. If they leave right now, Resurrection will heal him.
And if everything goes right, maybe, just maybe I’ll see my friend in the future.
I altered our world. Again. Because just like Alexandra, Lucas deserves more. Something everyone should understand is we deserve more in life. We deserve to live. Not just simply, but splendidly. Not with love or lust, but both. Not contently, but propitiously. We deserve a life where our heart pounds daily, fluttering with adrenaline and anticipation, a physical reminder of want and need. A reminder that we deserve more.
Because we deserve to live.
Epilogue
Ten Minutes Later
Lucas
Pain controls me. It’s been a part of me all my life, but right now it’s different. I can physically feel it fading away. My ribs crack loudly, and I suck in a ragged breath as the bones begin to mend themselves within my chest. My heart pounds, anxiously anticipating the torturous healing process. I double over, holding my stomach, in attempt to stop the strange revitalizing agony.
“It’ll be over soon, kid,” a deep voice tells me.
Fuck, I hope he’s right.
With another desperate and harsh breath, I try to open my swollen eyes. I’m met with nothing but blazing sunlight. I blink rapidly, but it doesn’t change the blinding colors of the sky.
A seagull lands beside me, and I almost fall off of the hard bench I’m lying on. It fluffs its white wings at me in a proud and arrogant way.
It takes me all of two seconds to realize I’m on a ship. Not a boat, not my father’s yacht. An enormous and flawless, handmade, wooden ship.
I swallow down the familiar metallic taste of blood, and my eyes slowly land on what I can only describe as … a fucking pirate.
My thoughts race, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. I blink slowly at him, taking in his polished black boots, worn dark jacket, and the shiny pistol at his hip. The only thing he’s missing is a silver hook and few lost boys.
What did I smoke?
“Where … where am I?” I ask the man in a dazed voice. I’ve never been one to panic, and I refuse to start now. Wherever I am, it’s a hell of a lot better than where I’ve been.
I lift up from the seat, wincing as I move. The strong breeze catches my matted hair. I pull my beanie a little further back on my head. Nothing but clear ocean waves greet me for miles and miles. “Where are we going?”
He pushes his black hair from his eyes as he lifts a wrinkled paper, and I read the words scrawled across it in blue ink.
Save him.
“We’re returning home,” he looks at me a little skeptically before taking a seat by my side on the hard bench, “to Resurrection Island.”
The End
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed Resurrection Island. Your thoughts on this book are always appreciated and important to authors and readers, even a one sentence review is helpful. Send Remy, Alexandra, Lucas, and the Islanders some love by leaving a REVIEW. For inside details, updates, exclusive deleted scenes, and other amazing giveaways, sign up for my monthly VIP NEWSLETTER.
Also by A.K. Koonce
The Mortals and Mystics Series
Fate of the Hybrid, Prequel
When Fate Aligns, Book one
When Fate Unravels, Book two
When Fate Prevails, Book three
The Royal Harem Series
The Hundred Year Curse, Book one
COMING SOON
Resurrecting Her – Book two of the Resurrection Series
If you want to stay informed about my books and characters, visit my WEBSITE , FACEBOOKor TWITTER.
About the Author
A.K. Koonce is mom by day and a fantasy and paranormal romance author by night. She keeps the fantastical stories in her mind on an endless loop while she tries her best to focus on her actual life and not that of the spectacular, but demanding, fictional characters who always fill her thoughts.
Acknowledgments
Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed Resurrection Island. As much as I’d like to believe Remy and Lucas are out there time traveling away, the details of this story are fiction. Alexandra and her oceanic tower are not a staple in our history but the story is influenced by history and fairy tales.
I want to emphasize how amazing my beta readers are. Courtney, Nikki, and Jessica thank you for always highlighting the beautiful parts of Resurrection.
Sending all my thanks to my sister who is always my partner in creativity and my best friend. Thank you to my parents for supporting my weirdness and for reminding me I can do anything I want to do, like bring fantasy, the paranormal, and all the bizarre things in my mind to life.
A huge shout out to my fantastic cover designer, Natasha Snow, for creating a gorgeous image of Remy. It is completely amazing!
A special thanks to my editor, Red Ribbon Editing Services and Varankor Proofreading and Editing, for catching every incorrect thing I scribble out. Thank you for making this book as perfect as can be and polishing it into something beautiful.
Thank you to my husband for always entertaining my eccentricity and supporting me even when I did not. A thanks to my beautiful daughter for unknowingly bringing me to this path in life and for being the most amazing kid a parent could ever ask for.
And a final thanks to you, the reader and supporter of the characters I have come to love. Thank you for taking the time to read about worlds outside of our own. You are the reason I write, and you are the reason I love what I do.
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