Crown of Doom and Light

by Jayde Brooks

  “Eden,” he said, pushing most of his weight down on top of her strong little ass. His lips grazed the edge of her ear. “Come on, baby. Come back to me. I’m right here, sweetheart.”

  “Baby’s gone,” she said through gritted teeth, twisting and writhing underneath him. “Get off of us!”

  He kissed the side of her neck. “I’m waiting on you, Eden. You need to come on.”

  The rumbling came from all around the house. An unlit candle hopped across the dresser and fell to the floor. The lamp next to the bed toppled over as well. She was doing this, or rather they were doing it through her. Shit. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was how it ended, and . . . He didn’t want to believe that it could be over, but he’d always known that the a day would come when nothing and no one would be able to stop it. Eden had fought a long and impossible battle. She had been brave beyond belief, and he had been honored to be her Guardian. He had been privileged to have a second life with his Beloved.

  “Where you go, I go, baby girl,” he whispered in her ear again. “You know that.”

  He eased his hold on her, cautiously pushed up off of her, stepped back, and spread his arms in surrender, half expecting Earth’s sun to explode or him to explode. Hell, something was going to explode. He was almost sure of it. Almost.

  She turned and sat on the side of the bed until the rumbling subsided. She took several deep breaths before finally looking up at him, then stood and wrapped both arms around his waist.

  “Not yet, cowboy,” she said, breathless.

  He cupped her face and raised it to his, checking her eyes. “You sure?” He brushed a loc from her face.

  “For now. Yes.”

  It was Eden. He marveled at those beautiful brown eyes.

  “How come I couldn’t follow you?” he asked again.

  “They didn’t want you too.”

  “They didn’t? Or you didn’t?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  The Omen had never been able to keep him away from her. Prophet found it odd that now, all of a sudden, they had the power to block him. He and Eden had shared the Blood Oath of the Guardians. They were connected at the soul level and nothing, absolutely nothing, could keep them apart. Except for her.

  “You can’t let them take you like that again, Eden,” he said, sitting back down in the chair and pulling her down into his lap.

  “I didn’t let them take me this time,” she said.

  “How were they able to do that?”

  Eden shook her head slightly, tears forming in her eyes. “I don’t know. One minute I was here, and the next . . . They’re getting stronger, Prophet,” she said, dismally. “I’ve known that, but they’re getting desperate to be set free.”

  They were growing and she was shrinking. He was losing her. Sure, he had that whole Blood Oath “I’ll follow you into the afterlife” thing, but what did it mean, really? He had waited four thousand years to find her again, and the two of them had been together less than a year. She was the reincarnation of his Beloved, Mkombozi, but she was also Eden, a young human female, who lived for nail polish, dancing, and him. And he wanted more of her. Yes. He needed more time with Eden.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Eden had the ability to kill him. Physically, Prophet was still stronger than she was. He was faster, but barely. More and more, she learned to understand and control the power of her thoughts—but, again, barely.

  Love. As corny as it was, it was the only thing keeping him safe. It was the only barrier that the Omen hadn’t been able to transcend, and after what had happened a day ago, Eden was starting to suspect that it wouldn’t be long before they found a way.

  “Daddy’s gotta go hunt,” he said playfully, plopping his long body down next to her on the sofa, stretching out his legs and resting his feet in her lap.

  This was Prophet being a big old annoying brat. This was him being exactly how she loved him most.

  “I need fries,” she said, pondering. “And a strawberry shake.”

  “How about trout and ginger root?”

  She grimaced. “That’s the best you can do, mighty hunter?”

  “I could raid the Were’s ranch and bring you back a cow or a sheep or something.”

  She laughed, but inside she marveled at how casually he had dismissed what had happened just a day ago. Prophet was good at downplaying the horrific. He probably thought he had to be to keep her from freaking out. She indulged him and let him believe that his efforts were effective, but the truth was she had been quietly coming to terms with her future from the moment she made the bond with the first Omen. Even then, all those months ago, she had known that she wouldn’t be able to sustain this temporary reality for long. Every waking and sleeping second of her life since then had been a constant and silent battle that she would have to fight alone.

  “I can almost read your mind,” he said, staring thoughtfully at her.

  “What am I thinking?”

  “I said almost.”

  “Well, what am I almost thinking?”

  “You’re almost thinking that you know how this going to end.”

  Eden was taken aback by his response because, surprisingly, he was pretty much right.

  “But you don’t,” he added.

  “I believe I do, Guardian,” she said with certainty and a hint of sadness.

  Prophet smirked. “None of this has played out the way it was scripted, Eden. You’re still here,” he said, raising a brow. “Little human, young, weak. You’ve done what an Ancient warrior, one of the most powerful, couldn’t do,” he reminded her. “How is it possible that you’ve managed to survive the Omen for far longer than Mkombozi could?”

  “Maybe it’s because of the Blood Oath. You said that you never made that oath with her. Maybe that’s the difference.”

  He shrugged. “It’s part of it, I’m sure, but not all of it. The oath allows me to go where you go, Eden. To follow you to hell and hopefully back, if need be. It allows me to reach you in unreachable places. But then there are times like this. We’re sitting here on the sofa in our home. You’re in no danger, no immediate danger as far as I can tell, and yet here you are, sitting quietly and calmly, all the while sharing your body with the essence of an ancient Theian demon.” He turned his head slightly. “The Blood Oath doesn’t mean shit right now. Does it?”

  The oath was an ancient rite of passage specific to the Guardian race. It was so ancient and had become so rare that until it had been enacted between Eden and Prophet it was believed, by living Guardians, to be more of a legend than an actual ritual. Even Prophet was caught off guard by the event when it happened, conjuring words that were embedded into his soul, into his DNA, words that came to him as if in a dream at the onset of the ritual.

  “Settle yourself, young one. Find your center. You’re going to need it.”

  Prophet spilled his seed inside a human woman for the first time in his entire life. He pressed his lips to her ear and whispered.

  “My body is your shield. My soul, your strength. My thoughts are your comfort. This is my vow to you. You are my eternity. My life is yours, and never will I deny anything that you ask of me.”

  There was pain, so much pain . . . and pleasure. There was blood. She rocked against him, fucking him, opening her eyes and staring back at him as her impending orgasm rose inside her. And then, in his language, in Theian, as she began to come, she said the words of the Blood Oath to him. Words she should not have known in a language that wasn’t hers.

  “The blood I give freely. As I honor your oath to me, Guardian. As I accept your offering and your sacrifice, in this life and in the next.”

  Eden cried out, drew closer to him, buried her face against his shoulder, and held on to him as if her life depended on it, as she found her own release. Prophet held her against him and then pulled away so that he could look into her eyes.

  “Say the last part with me,” he said, desperate to seal the pact. “Say it together, Eden. Understand?�
��

  She nodded weakly. And together, in Theian, they repeated the last verse of the Blood Oath.

  “Sacred blood has been given and received. Our union is unyielding and unbreakable. Together we are more powerful than apart. I accept this blood vow and it shall be now and always.”

  He stared at her, waiting for her response, but knowing that she couldn’t offer one. Eden had no idea why she had survived the Omen when Mkombozi had lost herself to them immediately upon making the final bond. But she wouldn’t be able to hold them off forever. They’d found a way to snatch her essence out of her body. This time she’d managed to fight her way back, but what about the next time? There would be a next time. She knew this instinctively.

  Prophet put his feet back down on the floor, sat up, and then leaned over and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. “I won’t be long, Beloved,” he murmured.

  He was irresistible and beautiful to watch. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him as he strode through the living room and kitchen and then out onto the massive deck. He turned and glanced back at her one last time before stepping over the railing and dropping like a rock. Seconds later he glided across the open field on the expansive ink-black wings that he summoned at will.

  Eden smiled and shook her head. “Showoff.”

  She relished the quiet in the house after he left, and the quiet in her head. She had cell phone coverage again. They’d had it for months. The thought occurred to her to call Molly, just to talk. But Eden was tired of talking. For now, she just wanted to—be twenty-six. She wanted to just be a girl, a black girl, a girl who liked to dance and paint her nails. A girl who, every now and then, smoked a joint. She wanted to be from Brooklyn. To love a boy. To hate her job.

  She missed so much. Especially Rose.

  “MyRose,” she muttered sadly.

  Rose had raised her. She had taught Eden how to make pancakes and all the words to Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay.” And she told Eden stories about a female warrior who was born to save the world.

  “You look so much like her,” Rose used to tell her.

  Of course it was a lie, but Eden didn’t know that.

  “And you are brave like her,” Rose said, smiling. “MyEden.”

  What she wouldn’t give to be six again, sitting in that woman’s lap, marveling at her far-fetched stories. The silence swelled to deafening levels, and all of a sudden Eden realized how much she hated being alone with herself. So she picked up her phone.

  “Mol?” she said, swiping at a rogue tear. “Hey. Whatchu doing?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Vamprye had been akin to lepers on Theia. His kind had never been allowed to be this close to the Elitest, the highest order of Ancients. Scooth, she’d called him. Pktah. Insults he hadn’t heard since Earth became home. Interchangeable and insulting, the earth phrase closest to their meaning was cockroach shit. Or maybe slug cum.

  Mkombozi had bathed as soon as he’d brought her here to this house, one more equipped for her comforts. She’d scrubbed the residue of him off of her. She’d told him as much.

  Van Dureel had been a boy when their world crashed into this one. One of his brethren had grabbed hold of him from behind and held him as the two literally fell through space, screaming as the atmosphere of this world seared their flesh to the bone. There was hardly any life left in them when they finally landed in a river that washed their bodies to a lake at the base of a mountain.

  He had seen wars between the Elitests army and the Demon’s. He’d seen the residual effects of their battles in burned villages and corpses. He’d even fed off some. Back then, that’s how he and his kind lived. They had to—quick, patient, and conscientious objectors in that war, Vampyre chose no side. They were scavengers, after all. Feeding on the near dead or freshly dead to survive, and only barely.

  Van Dureel remembered always being sick, always hungry, hiding and doing everything he could to stay out of the way of other Ancients who’d step on him with the same abandon as humans who stepped on ants that made the mistake of crossing their path. But that was then. Unlike the Elitests, vamps thrived in this world. They were left to themselves to heal and to gain strength, build communities and families. Sustenance was plentiful in this world, and human blood was rich and fatty and filling. He was a god here. And he had gone up against some of the very Ancients he’d have cowered before when he was on Theia. He’d gone up against them, fist for fist, and won.

  Mkombozi was a legend to him. He’d never been privileged to the firsthand tellings of stories that later made their way back to him after being twisted over tongues and morphed into fables sifted with lies and fantasies. The truth was murky and gray. He’d heard something about a thing called Omen, and about spells powerful enough to kill an Ancient simply by reciting it. He’d heard that the Demon was the father of the very one who was born to save Theia from his reign. And he’d heard that her own mother had destroyed her as their world fell from the heavens.

  Mkombozi was dead. He’d heard that too. But if it was true, then who was sitting in his living room, filling herself with fruit and bread? The goddess ravaged through it like she hadn’t eaten in four thousand years. And wine. She couldn’t seem to get enough of the stuff.

  “More of these,” she demanded in the old language, sitting on the floor of the main living space, eating off the custom glass coffee table he’d collected from the penthouse office of a dead businessman.

  Van Dureel couldn’t take his eyes off of her. “Grapes,” he said to the human woman sitting next to him, as fascinated by the Ancient as he was. “More grapes.”

  But she was more than just an Ancient. Mkombozi was the Redeemer, the savior and destroyer of their world. Dead. Her vivid, slanted sapphire eyes darted maddeningly around the room, lighting on everyone in it as she nearly swallowed her food whole. Van Dureel had never seen a more beautiful creature. She stood at least six feet tall, her body drawn with long, luxurious lines curving into full round breasts, wide hips, and lovely legs. Her skin was a magical translucent shade of golden brown. Dark, dramatic arched brows and thick, cascading ink-black hair made her look otherworldly, even for a Theian.

  She had been a general in their world. Khale’s second in command, he’d heard, and one of the fiercest warriors on Theia.

  “What are these creatures?” she asked, swiping her mouth with the back of her hand, staring curiously at the handful of humans in the room.

  “Humans,” he answered.

  Her disdain for them was almost as deep as it was for him. It was certainly a unique position for him to be in. To these humans, his humans, he was their leader, their messiah. Van Dureel was the alpha to five thousand lesser vamps and humans along the eastern coast from Virginia to Maine. But Mkombozi made it clear to them that he was nothing in her eyes, and it confused his followers.

  “They are native to this land?” she questioned.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  Mkombozi stood up. He’d found garments for her to wear, an oversized man’s shirt and jeans. She stalked up on each of the humans, slowly, studying them up close, even to the point of opening their mouths to examine their teeth. One female made the mistake of slapping the ancient’s hand away in protest, and then let loose a deafening scream as Mkombozi forced open her jaw and broke it off its hinge. The woman dropped dead at the ancient’s feet.

  “Fragile,” she said turning to him.

  He nodded. “Extremely.”

  “These are not warriors,” she stated.

  “Not Theian warriors, no. But they are capable against their own kind.”

  “How many?”

  “Many,” was all he could say.

  “And do they serve the peculiar?” she probed, turning back to him.

  Van Dureel had no idea what she was talking about. “What . . . peculiar?”

  She walked over to him and tilted her lovely head curiously to one side and then the other.

  “The impostor,” she clarified. “The one claimin
g to be me.”

  “Impostor?”

  “She stole from me,” she said scowling at him. “She took my Guardian. My Omen.”

  Then it dawned on him who she meant. If he was right, then this was more fucked up than he could’ve ever imagined. “The Reborn?”

  “Reborn.” She laughed. “Is that what she calls herself?”

  Van Dureel hadn’t personally laid eyes on the one they called the Reborn, but her, her Guardian, and the Weres had been a pain in his ass for several months now, interfering with his business and killing some of his best fighters. She had killed the Demon who’d returned from the dead. If he’d been resurrected, then why couldn’t Mkombozi be?

  “I don’t know what she calls herself. It’s just what she’s called. That, and Redeemer.”

  Again, she locked a cage of fingers around one of his three hearts. She was powerful enough to drill into him and tear it out. He had no doubt about that. He’d seen Ancients do it. He’d seen his own kind writhing around in convulsive agony screaming for death.

  “I am the Redeemer, scooth!”

  Van Dureel looked around at his followers and saw the disgust and fear in their eyes as they watched him cower. But there was no way for him to fight her and win.

  Mkombozi removed her hand. “Take me to her.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” he said immediately. “I don’t know how to find her. I’ve never even seen her.”

  She cut her eyes like she didn’t believe him.

  “She fights against us,” he admitted. “She and the other Ancients. Other humans.”

  “You are her enemy?” she asked suspiciously. “You are the Guardian’s enemy?”

  “My kind has always been the enemy of the Ancients,” he said, quickly, careful with his response.

  “Your kind was never given enough consideration by the Ancients to be looked upon as an enemy, pktah,” she said, smugly. “Your dirty little kind, who slithered around in dark places, stealing blood from infants and the aging like pathetic thieves, emptying them until they were too weak to move, to breathe, to live.”