by Jayde Brooks
Of course.
It is getting easier.
This wasn’t happening! Not now! Not in front of her friends. Eden backed up until she bumped into a bookcase. Every eye in the room fell on her.
“Eden?” Runyon said, stepping toward her.
“Stop!” she told him.
“Her eyes,” Drake said. “What’s up with her eyes?”
“Eden, hold on!” Prophet said, reaching for her.
“What’s happening?” Molly shouted.
“Stay back, Molly! Please!” Prophet insisted.
Now?
I like to hear her beg.
Now.
“Oh no!”
Eden heard a scream, but was it hers? Molly’s? Her friends shrank in a vortex of dark matter circling Eden. Her first instinct was to call on her Guardian. She knew he’d come. He’d save her or die trying. Eden pressed her lips together to keep from saying his name. They would kill him. They would use him against her. They had never said as much, but she knew. Eden knew what they were capable of.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It was rare, but it happened. Every now and then, it was possible to wander into a “pocket,” a small space, a place—into a day that wasn’t a day at all, but was in between. In between yesterday and today. Today and tomorrow. Nothing and something. Andromeda turned in slow circles, surveying her surroundings, suspecting that she had just tripped and fell her little happy ass into one of those “pockets.”
She’d been called The Seer of the Ages since she was young. She was the only one of her sisters who could, at any given time, be living in the past, present, future, or even the afterlife. Most times, she knew where she was and when. And then there were these times. She could count on one hand how many times she’d stumbled into these nowhere places. She’d come to them by accident, on her way to another destination. And each time she found herself utterly alone. No one could live in a pocket. They weren’t meant to be lived in, just passed through.
The landscape was flat and expansive, filled with gradients of grays and browns. Nothing green grew here. No crickets chirped. No birds tweeted. Not even worms crawled here. The sky overhead was the color of slate. There were no clouds. No sun. No breeze blew here. It was as eerie as eerie could be, and almost as soon as she’d arrived, Andromeda prepared to leave. But just as she started to go, she turned and saw him.
It was impossible for him to be here! No one else should be here! No one else could. He was watching her. How long had he been watching?
“What are you doing here, Guardian?” she boldly called out to him. “What are you doing in my pocket?”
Andromeda eyed Prophet suspiciously, thinking that maybe he wasn’t real and maybe her mind was playing tricks on her as it sometimes did. Or was he here to hurt her? His tall, muscular frame stood as still as a tree. She cautiously approached him, but she would not get too close. There was something about the way he was that bothered her.
“Why are you here?” she asked again, clenching her jaw.
The closer she drew to him, the more clearly she could see his expression. He looked like himself, but different. His silver eyes followed her as she approached, but the closer she got to him the more clearly she could see the vacant expression on his face.
Andromeda stopped just out of reach of his long arms, and tilted her head to one side and then the other. “Are you dead?” she asked, perplexed by how little emotion emanated from him. “Are you even breathing, Guardian?”
She resisted the urge to press her hand to his massive chest, out of fear that he might grab her and hurt her. He was still as handsome as ever, but shrouded in darkness. It was more of a feeling, a mood, than a color. It went against nature that he was allowed in this pocket. It didn’t make sense for him to be here, unless . . .
“Eden,” Andromeda murmured, suddenly overwhelmed with remorse. “It happened.”
There was no other explanation. She was gone. It was over. Andromeda’s eyes slowly closed as she shook her head in dismay. The Omen had taken her and destroyed the world, maybe even the universe, and all of them, including Andromeda, had to have been dead. Sadness overwhelmed her. She liked that girl. So much strength. So much courage.
“Why are you crying, Seer?” he asked, calmly.
“I’m crying for her. And for what you’ve lost in her.”
His emotions never stirred. “Lost? In who?”
“Don’t toy with me, Prophet!” she snapped, pain filling her voice. “You know who I’m talking about! Her! Your Beloved! The one you swore your oath to!”
“Which one?” he asked stoically.
His question was an odd one.
“Surely you’re dead,” she said, leaning in and studying him.
“Am I, Seer?” His words held a hint of menace, almost as if he were teasing her.
“But if you’re not dead, then is she?”
“She isn’t.”
“Eden? Eden’s not dead?”
“I never said her name.”
Mkombozi! The warrior’s name clanged inside Andromeda’s head like a gong. “She came back,” she muttered, stumbling away from Prophet. “She—she did.”
“You saw it. Say that you did.”
She searched her memories. They had a tendency to collide together, creating chaos inside her.
“I did.”
She’d seen Mkombozi on Ara, angry and yelling and fighting! “Fighting—fate and physics and—unnatural powers snatched her!” Andromeda looked to the Guardian. “You’ve seen her?”
He lowered and raised his head in a nod.
Andromeda’s eyes widened. “You chose her,” she said, slowly.
“I chose—my Beloved.”
There was a future that she could not see no matter how hard she tried or how many different ways she’d attempted to sneak in. A future designed by him, decided by him. Andromeda had been chasing it for too long, but it was as elusive as trying to catch air.
“Which one, Prophet?” she begged to know.
Maybe she and he were ghosts and this place was what the humans called purgatory. Could it be that they had been dead all along? Had they died long ago and just didn’t know it? Was Eden Reid now just a faint memory, or the whisper of a legend that once was?
“How do I know that your prophecy was ever real, Andromeda?” he asked sharply. “How can I be sure that you haven’t been making this whole thing up from the beginning, manipulating all of us for your amusement?”
Naturally, she was offended. “You’ve got me mixed up with some other petty creature, Guardian. I’ve got no time or patience for tricks and playing games.”
“Maybe you don’t play, but you position. You orchestrate and design. You influence.”
He was the one playing this game. He was hiding the truth from her. How he had managed to do it was mind-boggling, but the Guardian had done what couldn’t be done. He had somehow managed to keep Andromeda out.
“Which one is your Beloved, Prophet?”
He had loved Mkombozi for millennia before Khale destroyed her with the Spell of Dissolution. He had loved Eden for less than a year. Surely Mkombozi would be tempting. But the Omen would destroy her too. Wouldn’t they?
“Where is Eden?” she asked, shakily.
He stared blankly at her.
“Where is Mkombozi, Prophet?”
Again, he said nothing.
Andromeda clenched her fists in anger. “Which one did you choose?” she yelled.
Mkombozi had died once. Could she die again? Or this time, could she survive the bonds with the Omen and rule like Sakarabru had intended? Andromeda had to know. The Seer had suffered so much and so long at the hands of the Demon, collecting what she needed of his essence to create those damned Omen. She had allowed herself to be captured by the demon three times, tortured by him until she begged for death. And three times she collected remnants of him, small things, insignificant to him and unnoticed by him, but in each of those things was his essence, just a bit, just enough
for the Seer to form the Omen. They were never meant to last forever, just long enough to turn his own powers against him. They were never meant to survive beyond that. And yet, it was possible . . .
Fuck the Guardian! Andromeda turned her back to him and made up her mind to leave this pocket. If there was still a world outside it, she’d find someplace peaceful to go. She’d find an ocean and stare out over it and cast all her worries into it. She’d find a nice cup of tea and a bookstore and talk over the classics with a handsome British stranger. Or maybe she’d find a disco, snort a couple of grams of coke, hump a couple of dudes in the men’s room, and dance the night away.
As she neared the edge of the pocket, Andromeda slowed her pace, worried for the first time in all her life about what could be waiting on the other side. There might be nothing out there. A black hole. Gray emptiness. And then all of her lives, all of her pain and suffering, would have all been for nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The three Omen stood behind her. Closing in on her, touching her, murmuring foul things to her.
“It makes me wonder if that oath of his is worth a damn,” the sarcastic one said, pouting.
The fighter laughed. “Call on him, young Eden,” she coaxed her. “Call on your Beloved to stop this before it starts. Or is he too much of a pussy to face us?”
“He’s not . . .” Eden stopped short in her response. They wanted to make her angry, to throw her off balance.
Prophet was not afraid of them. He’d beaten them before. He’d helped Eden to defeat each and every last one of them in order to make the bonds. If it weren’t for him following her into the spirit realm to fight against the Omen, she’d have been dead a long time ago.
“He’s pretty, though,” said the sarcastic Omen, the one who’d put Eden in the chokehold the last time. “Pussy or not.”
“She’s his Beloved,” the reasonable one calmly chimed in. “And he would die for her a thousand times,” she said smirking. “All you’d have to do is call him. Isn’t that right, young one?”
As she’d suspected all along, Prophet was her Achilles’ heel and the Omen knew it. They would exploit him; use her love for him against her, if they could. They would use Prophet’s oath to her against him. If she called, he would come. And if he came, they would—
“Kill him,” all three whispered in unison, finishing her thought. “I can smell her fear,” one of them said, as they began walking in a slow circle around her.
“See the tears resting on the rims of her eyes?” another one said.
“Yes! Yes, I see them too.”
“He’s a brave one,” the reasonable one continued. “Powerful and cunning.” Her breath washed over Eden’s face. “You purposefully keep him away. Because he is weak?” she asked, arching an inquisitive brow. “Or because you are?”
“She is trembling.”
“Of course she is,” said the fighter.
“Why doesn’t she just call to him?”
“He’s easy to break and she knows it.”
The sarcastic Omen straightened her stance, took a step away from Eden, stared down her nose at her, and then nodded. The first blow came to the side of her face. Eden stumbled, but one of them caught her and held her while the other two beat her relentlessly with blows to her face and midsection. She struggled to get free, but then realized that even if she could break free of their grasp, she was trapped in something else—tar, pooling around her ankles.
“No!” she managed to say, her mouth filled with blood.
“Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!” she heard one of the Omen say. “Such a shame. Such a waste. But give up the goods, girlie, and this will all be over.”
Give up the goods. Let go. Release. These words repeated in her mind as she absorbed the Omen’s blows.
“Little human. Little girl.”
“Look at her suffering,” the calm one said.
“Pitiful! Disgusting! Weak,” the warrior said, delivering a powerful blow to Eden’s jaw.
All she had to do was to call his name and he’d come. Just open her heart. Make a wish. But Eden closed her mind and her mouth to the temptation of summoning her Beloved. Not to save herself, but to save him.
“I will make him scream, young one,” the warrior said. “I will make him beg for his death. I’ll peel him down to the bone marrow and make you watch.”
Prophet’s name swelled in her throat, but Eden wouldn’t say it.
Long, bony fingers wrapped around her neck, pulling her out of the tar pit, dangling her like a rag doll before two of the Omen. She kicked, grabbed the wrists of the one holding her with both hands, and struggled to breathe as the Omen started to strangle her.
The sarcastic Omen leaned in close to Eden, stuck out her tongue, and licked her victim’s swollen and bloodied lips. “Ah, yes!” she said, nodding her head, her eyes widening in anticipation. “You are certainly sweet, young one.” She laughed. “Face it, dear. You and your boyfriend are mine.”
“Ours,” the warrior retorted angrily.
The one holding her began to lower her slowly into the tar pit. Eden’s body went limp. Darkness began to envelop her; sadness overwhelmed her. This was it. They had her this time. The Omen had won.
“Call him before it’s too late,” the reasonable one said.
“It’s already too late,” said the sarcastic one. “We don’t need him. Look at her.”
The warrior knelt down as Eden sank deeper into the dark liquid. “We have her. We are her.”
Is this what it felt like to die, to fade away like nothing more than an old memory? Eden was too tired to fight. She had been working too long and too hard holding them back, keeping them from destroying not only her, but the world she’d fought so hard to save.
Prophet’s voice pierced through the chorus of other voices filling her head.
Don’t you fucking touch her! Don’t you dare, Were!
You stop her, Prophet! Stop her or I will! I swear!
And I swear that I’ll punch a hole through your chest.
It won’t matter if she kills us all.
“Yes,” she heard the Omen whisper in unison. “He is near, young one. And we will have him even if we already have you.”
They were going to kill him.
“Tear off his wings,” one laughed.
“Split him up the middle and rip him open.”
“I want to hear screams coming from his pretty mouth.”
“Pluck out his eyes.”
“Oh, I wish she could watch.”
You need to hear me, Eden. You need to know that I’m here, baby. I’m right here. No matter what happens, I’m with you.
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.
He would come to her if she summoned him, and that’s what the Omen wanted. But the Blood Oath between Prophet and Eden was powerful, more powerful than the Omen, and more powerful than time or space. He was her reason for resisting them and had been all this time. Yes, they were growing stronger, but they still weren’t as powerful as she was. Not yet. Eden brought her arms from her sides, pressing through the thick, sticky liquid around her, and pushed through it until she could reach above her head and extend her fingers imagining him reaching for her.
“What is she doing?”
“How? How is she doing that?”
“Shit!”
You come back to me, sweetheart. That’s it. You come to me.
Stay back, Were! You stay the fuck away from her!
C’mon Eden. I’m here. Right here.
Eden forced open her eyes, lowered her head, and saw the those three bitches staring up at her, levitating above that tar pit they’d tried to drown her in.
“Not yet,” she muttered, raking her angry gaze on each of them. “You can’t have me. No.”
The three Omen backed away from her, wide-eyed and astonished.
“You fucking bitch!” the warrior Omen spat.
Eden reared back her leg and landed a solid kick across the Omen’s face, sending her sailing through the air until she disappeared. Eden’s head jerked violently as another of the Omen pulled so hard on her locs that Eden’s body followed suit and fell onto the ground on her back.
“Yes, you are still so strong, young one,” that sarcastic one said, looming over her. “But barely.”
She raised her foot and bought it down hard toward Eden’s face. Eden quickly rolled to one side but was met immediately by a sudden burst of pain in her stomach. The warrior was back and she had plunged her kpinga deep into Eden’s stomach.
“You put up a good fight, young one,” she said, a surprising tone of admiration in her voice.
Eden cried out in agony as she drew her knees toward her chest.
“You have proven to be a worthy opponent, and I am certainly going to miss you.”
The sarcastic one stood in front of Eden and drew her foot back again. “Not me,” she said, aiming it toward Eden’s face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Nearly sixteen hours earlier, Drake had witnessed some otherworldly shit so fucking unbelievable that he didn’t tell a soul. They’d have thought that he was crazy if he’d said, “Say, yo. Guess what just happened in my office? This beautiful sistah had her soul snatched out of her in front of the file cabinet, and so, yeah. One minute she alive, talking, breathing, looking damn good too. The next . . .”
Runyon and that tall dude were some of those Ancients. He’d heard rumor that Molly’s man was head of the Were nation, like werewolves only not exactly because these dudes didn’t need a full moon to change. Apparently, they just did the shit when they felt like it. He personally hadn’t seen one, but enough people he knew had seen them that he had no reason to doubt their existence. Molly was homegrown human like him, and baby girl with the long locs, was, well, human—mostly. There was something about her that struck him as different, though he couldn’t put his finger on it until she gave up the ghost and left her body standing there like a mannequin.
He’d forbidden anyone to go into his office since that had happened. Hell, even he was afraid to go inside it, but as he was walking past it on his way to the mess hall, he heard something. He eased up to the door and pressed his ear against it. It could’ve been a rat. Those damned things thrived in an apocalypse. Drake started to walk away again when he heard another noise. Reluctantly, he pulled out his key, slipped it into the lock, and pushed open the door. The room was dark and looked just like he’d left it. He started to close the door when he heard her.
