by Kristie Cook
“Jeric.”
What the hell? I bolted upright. Morning sun streamed through the crack in the curtains, and Leni’s voice came loud and clear in my head. I knew the sense of smell was powerful, but this was more than a memory. I could feel it in my soul. I could feel her in my soul.
“Jeric, baby, I’m here. We made it!”
Yesterday’s flight down the stairs was slower than a turtle compared to how I bolted down the stairs now and out to the bay. Super-fucking-man wouldn’t have anything on me. I felt Leni out there, close but not close enough. Even from here, I could see the light of the Gate shining through the water. I ran into the bay, and when it became too deep to run, I prepared to swim.
“Leni!” I yelled before I sucked in a breath to take the dive down.
But a huge black shape soared through the water toward me. Not until it broke the surface did I learn that it wasn’t a single shape, but several. Dozens of Lakari flew upwards, searching for their comrades in the sky. They didn’t have to go far—the Lakari were always overhead. Their appearance was like a signal, and all of them swarmed down.
I ran back for the shore where I’d be able to fight better on solid ground. The earth quaked underneath my feet. Guardians poured out of the manor, but Asia already stood on the edge of the bay. As I ran out of the water and across the beach to the grassy lawn of the manor, the Lakari screeched overhead, the sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. I turned around and looked up to see them all meld into a large, black cloud that soared away.
“Do you feel them?” Asia asked, running up to me. She wore a man’s shirt, Brock’s I assumed, that reached her knees and tight legging things underneath. Her voice was filled with more hope and excitement than I’d ever heard. A complete turnaround from how she’d been when we’d arrived back yesterday.
“Yeah. I heard her, too, you know—” I twirled a finger around my head and peach fabric flapped between my fingers, spraying drops of water. “In my head …”
My voice trailed off as I opened my fist with Leni’s camisole still in it. Asia looked down at the soaking wet material, and the look on her face meant she knew exactly what it was.
She tugged at the hem of her shirt. “Looks like you had the same idea I did. I’ve been wearing Brock’s shirt since we got back.”
My jaw clenched.
“Yeah, well, I’m not wearing it, Asia,” I muttered as I stuffed the top into my back pocket.
We waited on the edge of the water along with the other Phoenix for news from the Guardians who had been on duty. The longer we waited, the more the truth settled in. I had felt Leni’s presence in this world again.
But I didn’t any more.
“Just the Lakari came through,” Kel announced a few minutes later. His eyes found Asia and me, and he shook his head.
“Bullshit,” I said.
“We felt them here,” Asia added. “What happened to them?”
“There were only the Lakari,” Kel said. “They had to work to get the Gate closed because more were trying to push through. More of those monsters, too.”
“No!” I growled, and I pushed my way through the crowd of Guardians that had gathered to stand in front of Kel. “They were here, damn it!”
“Dude, I’m sorry. They weren’t. Only a horde of Darkness trying to push its way through.”
I grabbed the front of his shirt and lifted him nearly off his feet, although he was about as big as me. “She was fucking here, Kel. You’re in charge of those idiots down there. What the fuck happened, goddammit?”
His hands shoved against my chest, and since his Twin Flame was in this world with him, he was much stronger than I was. I stumbled backward several feet, forced to let go of him. “Back the hell off, man. I don’t know what you two think happened, but nobody but Lakari came through that Gate. Didn’t you see them?”
I wanted to swing at him, but a small hand wrapped over my wrist, stopping me.
“You’re not helping,” Asia snapped at me. “They’re gone. They probably weren’t even here in the first place. The stupid Book or Enyxa was just fucking with us.”
A growl rumbled low in my throat as I glared at Kel, then his mate Mat, and then the other Guardians who were gathered around. Asia was right, though—if Leni had been here on this world if even for a second, she was gone now. The agony in my soul because of her absence confirmed that fact. I pushed my way past Kel and stomped for the manor, my soaked shoes squawking the whole way.
“Jeric?” Melinda called to me. My eyes skittered over to where she stood by the doors to the mansion. “If Lakari keep getting through even with the Gate sealed, the decision will have to be made. If you want to put it to a vote again …”
I let her trail off, ignoring her and refusing to acknowledge her message. This was a bad time to be reminding me that we’d have to collapse the Gates if we couldn’t keep the Lakari out of our world. I strode right past her and down the hall for the stairwell. Asia caught up with me and climbed the eight stories by my side, although we didn’t speak for several flights.
“We have to figure that damn Book out,” I said as we passed the fifth floor. “You read some of the symbols on it before, right?”
“They don’t tell me anything but our past names. I can’t even read them all.”
“Well, try harder, damn it.”
“Fuck you, Jeric. You try! I’ve had the Book the last few nights, and it only brought me misery. It’s your turn.” She stormed up another flight. “It was your other half who planted the clues, remember?”
“We don’t know that for sure. And you’ve read them better than anyone except her.” I was doing everything I could to suppress the anger that remained from the news Kel had delivered, but I wasn’t doing a good job at it. Asia didn’t deserve to be at the receiving end, but she was holding her own on dishing it back out. I needed to calm down before I punched the wall—or drove her into punching me. We climbed the last flight as I swallowed down the anger that persisted in bubbling up. “You realize what’s happening, right? We need to know if that Book can bring them back because the way things are going, I’ll have to order to collapse the Gates. Sooner rather than later.”
“Then you figure it out, Jeric. I’m done with it all, especially with that stupid-ass Book.” Asia slammed the door to the eighth floor open and stalked down the hall to her room.
I turned in the opposite direction toward my room. As soon as I was inside, I peeled my wet t-shirt off and pulled the camisole out of my back pocket. They hit the fiberglass with a splat when I tossed them into the tub before pushing my way out of my soggy jeans and boxer briefs. A long, hard run would have helped my mood, but I couldn’t leave the manor, and going down to the treadmills in the gym meant dealing with people, which would only fuel the anger.
Asia could have been right about the Book or Enyxa messing with our heads and making us think we felt our Twin Flames when we didn’t, but I couldn’t help but think the Guardians who’d been on duty had fucked up and locked them out. If the Gates were sealed, how could the Lakari get through on their own? Guardians would have had to create the opening, and if we hadn’t done it on our side, then someone must have on the other.
Unless the Dark side really was becoming powerful enough to break our seal.
I turned on the shower as hot as it would go and stepped in. The physical sting of the hot spray gave me something to focus on besides the anger. Once it washed away, the full force of what it all meant slammed down on me. I dropped to my knees in the tub and picked up the peach-colored top. It no longer held Leni’s scent, washed out and lost down the drain. Just as I was losing her, slipping away like the water through my fingers.
I crossed my arms over my stomach, leaned over my knees, and did what I hadn’t done since I’d awoken from the coma and learned my whole family had died: I sob
bed my ass off as the water poured down on me until it turned ice cold. Cold as my soul was quickly becoming.
Chapter 20
Blackness filled the hole in the Gate. Darkness flew past us. Just as I’d crossed through the hole into our own world with Brock, Bex, and Hayden right behind me, I slammed into something solid. Like a rubber ball bouncing off a hard wall, we ricocheted backward through the sea of Dark souls that had suddenly swarmed in, and against the far wall of the Gate, which pushed us off into another direction. My body cartwheeled and somersaulted around the cylinder. I lost myself in the Darkness that had filled it, unable to gain any kind of orientation. I screamed and reached out, thankful to latch onto both Brock and Bex. We careened around again, spun, and soared out into a gray light.
We landed with a splash into freezing cold water. I kicked my way to the surface, and the others popped up around me. At least we’d all made it, wherever we were. The sky was an overcast gray, and the water was a darker slate color. The rough waves told me it was a sea—not a pond or lake, and definitely not Tampa Bay. City buildings stood in the distance on our right, a grouping of tall wind turbines rose out of the water ahead of us, and what appeared to be a castle or fort of some kind stood on the shore to our left, the closer one that we swam for.
“I am so sick of this!” I screamed as we waded out of the water. “We were there! I felt him! What the hell happened?”
Anger consumed me, and I held onto it, because otherwise it would be a deep depression that would suck me down its black hole. And I didn’t know how many more times I could climb out of that. How many more times I could fight off the Darkness.
“They closed the Gate on us,” Brock guessed, his voice a growl. “Idiots thought we were Lakari.”
“Oy! Where did you lot come from?” A dark-haired man dressed in black pants and a thick, gray coat stood on the beach in front of us. I thought his thick accent could be British … like I thought Hayden’s could be Australian. Possibly, but not likely.
“Where are we?” Hayden asked.
The man cocked his head as we all shivered before him, and then he ran off, over a rock piling.
“What an asshole,” Brock muttered. I glared at him. I couldn’t disagree, but his attitude was grating on me. Probably because it fed my own shitty mood, which only made me angrier with him.
“Come ’ed,” the man yelled. “Come with me!”
We hesitated at first, but this very human-like being seemed to be our only hope of learning where we were. So we climbed up and over the pilings to find a parking lot with a red van sitting in it and the man standing at the open rear doors, pulling something from the back cargo area. He looked human and spoke English, although heavily accented, but the van didn’t look exactly right to me. It was taller and narrower than the vans we had at home, and the steering wheel was on the wrong side of the cab. My heart leapt, though, at the white lettering on the passenger door: Hughes Fishery of Liverpool.
“Liverpool?” I asked. “That’s where we are?”
“Did you get turned ’round on your swim? This is Fort Perch Rock in New Brighton,” the man said. Did he really think we’d been out for a swim in these kinds of clothes and this kind of weather? He nodded to the distant shore with the city buildings as he handed me a gray wool blanket. “Liverpool’s on the other side of the Mersey.”
I looked up at the old stone fortress in front of us as I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, although I could barely feel the cold from the adrenaline suddenly shooting through my system. I contained my excitement, though, not wanting to get my hopes built up that we’d actually made it to Earth after all.
“England?” I hedged.
“Of course. What other Liverpool is there?” He handed blankets to the others.
“As in home of the Beatles?” Brock asked. Even his tone, which had been so dark and heavy lately, had lightened.
“The one and only. What’s da matta with you lot? Where’d you think ye’ra?”
“Who’s the queen?” Bex asked.
He looked at her as though she asked what color the sky was. “Queen Elizabeth. Who else?”
Could we really be on Earth? Our world? Could we be so lucky that when they blocked us at the Tampa Gate, they knocked us only slightly off course?
Several figures appeared out of nowhere and surrounded us, all dressed in black that provided a steep contrast to their snow-white skin. Three of the dozen or so were women.
“She’s probably not queen any more,” one of the newcomers said, his voice deep and gravelly. “Me thinks me mates ate her last night.”
He tossed his blond head back and laughed, exposing long fangs that jutted where his eyeteeth should have been. Then, moving faster than a blur, he held our rescuer pinned in his arms, and his head dove for his captive’s throat, shredding it like a dog attacking a small animal and lapping up the blood.
Bex and I both screamed until Hayden clamped his hands over our mouths. We fell silent immediately, and he let go.
“OHMAGAWD!” Bex shrieked as soon as he did. “Are ya’ll vampires?”
If I hadn’t been watching the gore with my own eyes, I might have laughed. These people weren’t the Lakari, but I could feel the intense Darkness of their souls, their auras almost solid black. Brock must have, too, because he dropped his blanket as quickly as I did mine. We both charged at our deranged attackers. We moved fast, but they moved even faster. I was able to slam my fist into a woman’s throat, but instead of her form shattering like glass or disintegrating into smoke, it felt more like a rock-solid wall. My hand crumpled under the force. She grabbed for me, but I threw her off and spun out of her reach. Only to find myself in someone else’s arms. In less than two heartbeats, we were all pinned by one of these monsters, their long fangs poised at our throats, where they all froze. I tried to fight, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t kick, scratch, or squirm my way out. I couldn’t move at all.
My whole body had become completely paralyzed.
A green light shot across the parking lot and hit the woman holding Bex. She dropped to the ground like a dead weight, and then disappeared into thin air with a faint popping sound. Bex didn’t move a hair, though, also paralyzed. We all remained frozen in place as more people, dressed in black leather outfits like some kind of superheroes—or maybe villains—spread out before us. With only six of them, they were outnumbered at least two-to-one, but they somehow had complete control over the situation.
A guy not much older than us seemed to be their leader, and if he were chosen by appearances, I could see why. He had an inhuman beauty to him, even if his sandy brown hair was a little longer than I preferred. It somehow made him all the more otherworldly. Of course, we obviously were on another world than Earth, but looking at the others we’d met so far, he was a prime specimen for this place. His leather pants and black shirt hugged him tightly to show every muscle, and if I thought Jeric and Brock were built nicely, they had nothing on this guy. He had the form of a god, and with the fierce look in his eyes, he could have easily been a warrior angel or a beautiful demon.
He stood a few yards in front of the others, his arm held straight out in front of him, his palm facing us. From what I thought were green eyes, his sparking gaze swept over the group, back and forth and side to side, as his body remained tense and alert. On either side of him stood two more men—a tall blond and a shorter but powerfully built bald man. A green light, like the one that had soared across the lot a moment ago, danced over the blond man’s fingers. Next to him stood a tall, perfectly built woman with long, snowy hair but a young and gorgeous face and skin as white as those who’d originally attacked us. On the other side of the leader and the bald guy was a small, blond woman and a tall, thin, dark-haired woman whose eyes I swore glowed yellow like a cat’s.
“You know what can happen if you try to fight us.” The f
emale voice with an American-like accent sounded in my mind, and nobody’s lips had moved. What kind of world was this? They obviously had special powers. Were they like the Phoenix Guardians, but of their Gates? We’d only been able to mind-talk in certain situations, when our souls were projected and when Jeric had been deaf. “Give them a chance, my love.”
The beautiful man’s hand dropped. My body felt released.
“Stupid fools. Their blood smells too sweet to resist.” One of the original attackers—the woman I’d thrown off—jumped for me again.
The others lunged for us, too, like a den of lions on a small group of antelope. Brock and I called on our Phoenix abilities to fight them off, but Hayden and Bex didn’t have our strength and speed. In fact, we were barely able to defend ourselves, our powers too weak since we were Separated from our other halves. We punched and kicked with our limbs blurring, but our opponents were stronger, harder, and faster, and no matter where our blows landed, they hurt us worse than them. Someone’s fangs scraped across my wrist, and I immediately went limp. Bex screamed next to me.
Then one by one, the attackers began disappearing with barely audible popping noises.
When they were all gone, the other group remained, the man’s palm pointed directly at me. Bex, Hayden, and Brock stood close to me, all of us with our hands up in surrender.
“Wait! Not them!” The young-sounding female voice again.
The guy cocked his head. Another pop sounded, and a young woman, auburn-haired and dressed like the others in black leathers and combat boots, suddenly appeared next to him. She placed her hand lightly on the guy’s arm, and he dropped it and stood up straight, and then she turned her gaze on us. Sheesh. Talk about inhumanly beautiful. She looked like an angel with the prettiest, biggest, almond-shaped brown eyes I’d ever seen. I practically wanted to take a knee in front of her.
