Crown of Doom and Light

by Jayde Brooks

  “It can be done if we’re diligent, if we pay attention. Her weakest moment is the gap between when the Omen have possession of her and when she gets it back, and for now, she is strong enough to do that, to fight them, so we have to strike soon,” she explained.

  “She was barely strong enough,” Torok reminded her. “The next time, she might not be able to fight at all, in which case it’ll be us against the Omen, and we will lose.”

  “Maybe we should ask ourselves what we have lose,” Isis said.

  “She’s right,” ENIG agreed. “Eden can’t hold them off forever. This world will end, and us along with it. There is no Khale around this time to slow the destruction long enough for us to escape to someplace else. The destruction, this time, will be absolute. If there’s a chance, even a small one, that we can prevent that from happening, then I say we take it.”

  Of course she knew that he watched her. Isis might not have been able to see the Phantom, but her keen senses and intuitive nature had always been infallible. Alone in her apartment and freshly showered, she dropped the towel she’d been wrapped in and stopped, waiting for the slight shift of air from a nearly inaudible inhale coming from him. She slowly turned to one corner of the room behind her.

  “After the conversation we had earlier about the possible end of the world and us along with it, I’m surprised that you are still even bothering to play these games, ENIG. We could be dead soon.”

  Gradually ENIG revealed himself, gawking at Isis’s naked body. He was handsome in his own way, pallid coloring surprisingly complimented by dark hair and heavy brows. ENIG was taller than Isis, which was rare. It was the reason she’d preferred the Guardian as her lover over the Were, except, of course, when the Were was in his beast form. ENIG wore a simple white button-down shirt and loose fitting jeans. He was usually barefoot, as he was now. His eyes, though as transparent as the rest of him, held a slight blue hue to them, subtle, but interesting.

  “I should be embarrassed,” he admitted, stepping out of the corner. “But I’m not.”

  “Good. We don’t have time for the nonsense of embarrassment.”

  Isis raised her arm and stretched out her fingers to touch him, but the only thing she felt was the cool, moist mist that he was made of. Touching him was like touching fog. His reaction to her touch was surprising. His eyes slowly closed, his mouth opened slightly, and he sighed.

  “You felt that?” she asked, curious.

  “Of course I did,” he responded with a sly grin.

  “So, you watch me and touch yourself? Is that how it works?”

  He sheepishly averted his gaze, but then quickly recovered and bought it back to hers. “I’d much rather be touching you,” he courageously admitted.

  Isis smiled. Impending and unavoidable death did that to men. It gave them extraordinary courage to say and do all the things they’d dreamed of saying and doing before it was too late.

  “And do you suppose that could ever happen, considering the fact that I’m—not like you?”

  “Do you mean to ask how I would fuck you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her inquiring mind was reeling with curiosity. Of course, the fact that she hadn’t been laid in months might also have something to do with it. Human males didn’t really do it for Isis; lack of stamina, size, the fact that they broke too easily, all those things were a turnoff to her, which is why she preferred her Ancients—but only the alphas, and only certain species. The pretty ones, like Guardians and Weres. Berserkers were too fat and oily, and Fey were too delicate, though not as delicate as human males. But Fey didn’t like to get down dirty and sloppy with sex.

  “There are many ways to orgasm, Isis,” he explained in a velvety tone she had never noticed before.

  “Do you have a dick?”

  He laughed. “I certainly do.”

  “How can I feel it if it’s like the rest of you?”

  “Oh, you’ll feel it, and it’ll be unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. I can promise you that.”

  All of a sudden, ENIG vanished and Isis was lifted off of her feet, carried effortlessly over to her bed and gently placed there.

  “Don’t move, Isis,” the sound of his voice seemed to come from all around her. “Let me show you.”

  It wasn’t in Isis’s nature to be passive. But what choice did she have in the matter? She couldn’t even see him. Her guard was up, though. That part of her nature couldn’t be helped.

  “Relax, beautiful Isis,” he whispered.

  Not being able to see him unnerved her, but just when she thought it best to stop this nonsense, a thin ribbon of mist appeared above her head and snaked its way to the center of her chest. The single strand separated into two and lengthened horizontally across her until they each came to her nipples and began to wrap themselves around them.

  A cool and prickly sensation tightened around each one. It was a strangely erotic sensation, unexpectedly stimulating and arousing. Her nipples hardened and swelled into purple peaks almost to the point of pain. Her breath quickened, and without intending it she spread her legs. A third stream of mist branched off from the central one and traced down her stomach to the dark triangle between her thighs.

  Isis arched her back, cried out, and began thrusting her hips against the stream enveloping her throbbing clit. Was that his tongue? Could it be his cock? She had no idea, but whatever it was, it created the loveliest experience. She prayed it would never end. She had closed her eyes, allowing herself to get lost in the feeling, and when she opened them again ENIG appeared, kneeling between her legs, lost in the throes of his own passion. He was not moving, but he sent waves throughout her body, filling her with whatever it was that he was made of until she could hardly breathe. Goosebumps rose all over her body. ENIG made love to every inch of her all at once, and it took every ounce of her strength not to pass out from the sheer ecstasy of it.

  “Agh! Oh, shi—!” He was cumming.

  Isis’s body was doing something else. She felt swallowed by a wave, all of her nerve endings exploding at once. The room began to spin, a maddening ring chiming in her head.

  “What—is—this?” She struggled to say, clutching the sides of the mattress to try and stop the room from spinning.

  She wanted to scream, but a scream would insult this sensation that enveloped her. She wanted to cry, but even tears weren’t enough.

  “Come, Isis,” he demanded. “All over me!”

  Isis’s juices exploded, and that’s all she remembered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  They arrived at the site of the motel where the Guardian and his girlfriend had shown up to save the day and found it littered with decaying, headless vamp corpses and some human bodies. The human dead pretty much all had their heads, though.

  “Unsettling.” Van Dureel turned and saw Mkombozi staring at him with a smirk on her face. “Is it not, Vampyre?”

  She looked pleased by the carnage. It made his stomach turn flips. To think that one Guardian and one . . . whatever the hell she was, could do this to hundreds of his kind in a matter of minutes was more than unsettling. It was fucking terrifying. Any humans who’d been saved by those two were long gone by the time Van Dureel and Mkombozi had arrived. But he knew the nature of the thing he hunted. He climbed back in the SUV with Mkombozi and pointed it south on the road. Winter was coming, and the last place their prey would want to go this time of year was north.

  Van Dureel was treading ice so thin that if he coughed he’d fall through. If she was who she said she was, then she was back from the dead. That, in and of itself, made her one scary bitch, but even if she wasn’t back from the afterlife, she was most certainly one of the Elitest who’d squash him like a bug if the mood struck her. And it wouldn’t benefit him to find the Guardian or the human he was with, because they’d likely kill him on sight. He didn’t want to end up headless like his brethren back there.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, staring out of the passen
ger window as he drove.

  He considered lying, then decided to tell the truth. “I am thinking that when we find your Guardian my loyalty to you has got to be rewarded.”

  She slowly turned her beautiful face to his. “Perhaps I will let you keep your head.”

  He nodded his approval. “So you plan on finding him and then what? Killing her?”

  “First I will take from her what she stole from me, and then I will kill her.”

  “The Omen? That’s what she stole?”

  “Yes.”

  Van Astin had told him that he’d heard of the Omen of the legend and that the Omen were spiritual in nature, so they were absorbed by the Redeemer. How in the hell did she plan on taking them back if they weren’t trinkets or talismans? Van Astin had also told him that the Omen had been the reason for the destruction of Theia.

  “The Redeemer was to absorb or bond with all three of those things, which would make her powerful enough to defeat the demon,” he explained. “But she had to kill him quick and then the Shifter, Khale, had to kill her quick before they took her over and destroyed the universe. Sort of like a nuke times a trillion.”

  “So how is it that this human girl still has those things in her and we’re not all dead?” Van Dureel asked, taking a drag off Van Astin’s blunt.

  Van Astin shrugged. “Nobody knows. It’s like the mystery of the universe or something. Crazy shit.”

  A human could manage the Omen but a Theian warrior, a general, could not? But a Theian general could come back from the dead. Nothing about any of this felt positive to him. And yet he had been caught in the middle of something bigger than anything this or any other world had ever known.

  A small band of humans hiking along the side of the road scurried like roaches and ran into the woods at the sound of his vehicle pulling up behind them. Van Dureel didn’t even stop it fully before he swung open the door, jumped out, slid across the hood, and grabbed a female by the collar. She squirmed, kicked, and punched to try and get away, but she was like a mouse to him. Mkombozi appeared quickly behind him.

  “Seen any Guardians lately?” he asked, sarcastically.

  The woman’s wide, frightened eyes relayed her fear.

  “Put her down!” a male yelled, pointing a shotgun at him. “Put her down now!”

  Van Dureel was nothing if not literal. He dropped her like she was infested with something. She hit the ground hard, hurried to her feet, and ran off into the woods with the others. The man started to run too, but before he could, Van Dureel came up behind him, snatching the weapon from his hands and tossing it a hundred yards across the road on the opposite side.

  “I’m looking for someone,” he said, threatening, and lifting the human’s fluffy body off the ground by the neck. “An Ancient,” he explained, ignoring the obvious signs of the man choking. “Big dude, silver eyes, wings. Seen any of those?”

  It took a few moments before he realized that the man probably couldn’t answer because he probably couldn’t breathe, so, like the woman, Van Dureel dropped him too.

  The human coughed and desperately sucked in air, before finally nodding. “Yes,” he said, wheezing.

  Van Dureel grabbed him by the back of his collar and raised his face up so that he could see it. “Which way did he go?”

  North. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to feed her hopes and enough to buy him some time to figure out the best way for this whole scenario to play out. What did a vamp like him value above all else? Power—but his own, not somebody else’s. Ruling the world wasn’t even a thing. He was fine with letting the humans get back on track and rebuild what was theirs. But he did want to rule his part of it. Because of him, he and his drones had known what it was like to have full bellies, to feel safe from the persecution and racism they’d suffered on Theia. Van Dureel had led a quiet revolution these last four thousand years, and he had earned a right to sit at the top of the food chain instead of scavenging for whatever he could get his hands on.

  “How far north will we have to travel?” Mkombozi asked.

  “I have no idea,” he said, honestly. “He didn’t walk north. He flew. I can’t track him through the air, but someone, somewhere knows where to find him. I’m banking on it being someone up north,” he shrugged, letting the man get away. “It’s as good a plan as any.”

  She didn’t seem too cool with the plan but what choice did she have but to concede to it? While they drove, Van Dureel let all the possibilities play out in his head. If she was the Redeemer and the other chick was the Redeemer, then what would it mean to put the two together? One possessed Omen and one didn’t, but the one without had managed to resurrect herself, so it was a question of who was the most powerful. He pondered on that for a bit until he came to the conclusion that he had no idea and was only giving himself a headache.

  This one wanted her Guardian back, but the other one believed that he belonged to her, and the Guardian obviously believed that he belonged to that one as well. Chicks fought over dudes all the time. But not all-powerful chicks with the ability to destroy universes and demons and shit. Would they trust him to make a choice between them, or would they just duke it out until one was dead and the other could hit him over the head with a club and drag him away by the hair?

  If Mkombozi somehow managed to come out the victor in all this, would he be in her good graces? If she didn’t blow up the world, could he count on her to give him territories, to make him king? Would she just be nice to him and not kill him off?

  “You are quiet, Van Dureel,” she said, staring suspiciously at him. “I sense that you are considering the situation as it is and as it could be?”

  “I’m considering many things,” he admitted readily.

  “As long as you do not consider betraying me,” she warned, “then I do not object.”

  Another time, another place, another resurrected Elitest, he might’ve reached across the SUV, grabbed her by a handful of her hair, pulled her face to his and shoved his tongue down her lovely throat, then pulled her onto his lap and fucked her until she cried. But this was now, and here, and she was who she was. So he thought better of it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The art of knowing how to find her center had always been the one thing that Eden could fall back on when chaos enveloped the rest of the world. She sat on the deck of their Vermont home cross-legged, her eyes closed, her back straight and strong, deleting stimuli from every one of her external senses until she became lost in the vacuum of silence. She searched inside herself for a word: Peace.

  There was darkness, of course. And thankfully, no Omen this time. It happened like that sometimes and she was grateful when it did. This time there was nothing. A void. She was a void, at least for the moment.

  “We should just stay here.”

  Prophet’s voice cut through the silence and darkness enveloping her. Ever since their Blood Oath, he’d been able to enter her meditative state freely, except when the Omen beat him to it. When that happened he wasn’t allowed to invade the secret space. At first she believed that it was the Omen who kept him out, but now she knew better.

  Gradually, his form began to come into view in her mind’s eye. He looked close enough to kiss.

  “Me and you. Right here for the rest of our lives,” he smiled. “What do you say, cutie?”

  “If that were possible I’d be all over it,” she said, smiling back.

  “There’s no place that you can go where I can’t follow, Eden,” he reminded her, unnecessarily.

  “I know.”

  “Then why do you insist on keeping me from you when the Omen take you? Have you lost faith in me, Beloved? Do you doubt my ability to protect you? Do you question my role in all of this?”

  Eden slowly opened her eyes, expecting to see him sitting on the deck in front of her, but she was still alone.

  “I’m here,” he said, from behind her.

  “Of course not, Prophet.” Eden sighed, remembering how the Omen had asked her simi
lar questions about him.

  He walked over to her and held out his hand to help her to her feet. “But you don’t trust that I can fend for myself.”

  “You know the Omen individually,” she explained.

  He had shown up and helped Eden to survive all three bonds, separately. He knew them to a point, but not nearly as intimately as Eden did. And yes, he knew them individually, not collectively.

  “I’m not threatened by them.”

  “You should be. Think about it. What are the Omen, together, Prophet? They’re Sakarabru. They’re the Demon, and it’s like he’s not even really dead when the three of them are together. He’s just dissected. The Omen are made of his essence. His thoughts, his warrior spirit, his passion. Together, they are him. Why do think Andromeda gave Khale the Spell of Dissolution to use against me right after I killed the Demon? Why do you think she used it so quickly against Mkombozi when everyone thought she’d killed him.”

  “Mkombozi succumbed to the Omen immediately, Eden. Khale had to destroy her. You were on the verge of falling to the same fate. Not trying to make excuses for Khale, but I believe she thought that you were becoming victim to them.”

  His argument was sound, and maybe in some ways he was right. But she had a slightly different spin on her version of why Khale was so quick to use that spell. “Khale knew that the only way for the Demon to be truly destroyed was for the one who destroyed him to die too. Otherwise she would risk becoming him.”

  Eden stared sorrowfully into Prophet’s eyes. “The Omen want you. They want me to watch all the terrible things that they plan to do to you, and they beg me to call on you.” She shrugged. “I choose not to, and it pisses them off.”

  “I’m not afraid of the Omen, Eden,” he said, pridefully. “It’s because of me that you were able to overtake them and make those bonds.”

  “Which is exactly why they hate you so much,” she argued. “I don’t want to even imagine what they’d do to you if they could.” She shook her head. “You saw what I—they almost did the last time they took me and you couldn’t stop them. No one could have.”