by S. J. West
“I see,” Ethan says, sounding disappointed. “Well, do the best you can. That’s all I can ask from either of you.”
Both Atticus and Marcus look at me with undisguised curiosity.
“So you’re the one who planted a tracer on Helena?” Atticus asks gruffly. “How did you manage that?”
“By allowing her to believe I wasn’t a threat,” I answer. “I was drunk at the time, so I suspect she didn’t view me as a worthy adversary.”
“Remind me never to underestimate you then,” Marcus tells me with a flirtatious twinkle in his light brown eyes. From the self-confident way he holds himself, I can tell Marcus isn’t used to being rebuffed by the fairer sex. He is good-looking and perhaps even charming to other women, but I need more than that to draw my interest.
“I doubt I’ll need to remind you of anything, unless you’re becoming prematurely senile. Odds are we’ll never have reason to see each other again after I help Ethan capture Helena,” I tell him. When I see his well-practiced, lady-killing smile falter, I can’t help but feel as though I’ve taught him a small lesson in humility.
Oddly enough, I hear Atticus chuckle and see him slap Marcus on the back.
“Well, I’ll be damned, Marcus,” he says to his friend. “I think we actually found a woman who is immune to your charms.”
“More like apathetic,” I clarify, “but we can go with immune if that makes you feel any better.”
Atticus begins to laugh harder, obviously enjoying Marcus’ sudden discomfort.
“I don’t say this to many people,” Atticus tells me, “but I like you, Julia Grace.”
“Call me Jules,” I tell him. “All my friends do.”
“I’m glad I could help the two of you bond so quickly,” Marcus says, obviously not taking my gentle jab at his ego to heart. I’m glad to see that he has a sense of humor and doesn’t take himself too seriously. That at least gives him some friend potential.
“Have you had any luck tracking down Helena?” Atticus asks me. I can already tell from the expression on his face that he isn’t expecting me to have news concerning her whereabouts and that his question was more out of politeness than anything else.
“Not yet,” I answer. “But we’ll find her. Don’t worry about that.”
Atticus nods but doesn’t look as if he has much faith in me finding Helena anytime soon. I don’t take any offense. They’ve been searching for her for months. Why would I be able to find her on my first day?
“I don’t suppose either of you have eaten Ethan’s cooking?” I ask in an attempt to lighten the mood. “He’s making me dinner tonight, and I want to know what to expect.”
“Ethan’s cooking for you?” Atticus asks as if I’ve said the strangest thing he’s heard in a long time. “He’s never cooked for anyone, as far as I know.”
“I know how to cook,” Ethan assures me. “Malcolm’s been teaching me so I would be prepared.”
“Prepared for what?” I have to ask. “Do you plan to wow your enemies with your culinary skills instead of fighting them?”
Ethan grins. “Not exactly, but close.”
I look at Atticus and Marcus. “Since neither of you have tasted Ethan’s cooking, why don’t you join us this evening?”
“They have work to do here,” Ethan is quick to say before either man can give an answer of their own.
“I thought this was going to be a business meal,” I reply, testing him to see what he says next. From the way he’s acting, our meal might actually be a date and not just a “let’s get acquainted” dinner like he implied. Either way, I want to know what the deal is. “Shouldn’t I get to know as many of your men as I can?”
“If I wanted them there, I would have asked them myself,” Ethan tells me. “Unless you have a problem dining with me alone.”
“I didn’t say that,” I reply.
“Ethan’s right,” Atticus pipes up before things can get more intense between me and Ethan, “we have work to do here. If we can prevent this war, we need to try. I would hate to leave this planet wondering if I could have done more to help.”
“I suppose we’ll have to take a rain check,” Marcus says to me with a wink. “But thanks for asking.”
“We should probably get going,” Ethan says to me.
I hold my hand out to Atticus. “It was nice meeting you. I hope this isn’t the last time we get to see each other.”
Atticus shakes my hand and says, “I’m sure it won’t be. In fact, I’ll make sure it isn’t.”
I turn to Marcus and say, “And it was interesting meeting you.”
Marcus smiles and shakes my hand. “Have fun tonight, but not too much fun.”
I am about to ask him what he means by that but don’t get a chance to. Ethan places his hand on my shoulder and phases us to yet another strange new world.
Only this time, we don’t phase onto a peaceful part of the planet. We phase directly into the middle of a battlefield.
I probably do one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done in my life. I duck and run to take cover. Why is this a colossal mistake on my part? What I should have done was grab ahold of Ethan and relied on him to phase us away. That would have been the smart thing to do. Yet I let my natural instincts take control of my body and run behind a large boulder on the rocky terrain we phased onto. Ethan has no other choice but to follow me.
“I thought you said all the places we were going to were safe!” I yell at Ethan. I’m not yelling because I’m mad. I’m yelling because the noise of the battle raging around us is so loud I can barely hear myself over the bedlam.
“They’re supposed to be!” he shouts back, cautiously looking over the top of the boulder we’re hiding behind to survey the fighting that’s happening all around us. I notice him go stock-still as if something unexpected catches his eyes. “Silas?”
“Is that the War Angel we were supposed to meet here?” I ask him.
Ethan crouches back down next to me shaking his head. “No. He’s one of Helena’s men. Check the tracker and tell me if she’s here.”
The urgency in Ethan’s voice spurs me into action. I hold the tracker out so we can both see the screen. I find myself holding my breath as we wait to find out if Helena is on this planet.
The red dots only have a chance to blink once in sequence before they all turn green. Only a second later, we’re given a direction and a distance to our target.
“She’s north of us and …” I blink to make sure my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me before I check the distance again. “She’s only one hundred feet away from us, Ethan,” I say, looking over at him. “That means she’s directly behind us.”
“Hide the tracker in your jacket pocket so she doesn’t see it,” he advises me.
I notice Ethan place his right hand on the hilt of the sword hanging against his hip. He grips it tightly as if preparing to draw it out.
“Stay here,” he tells me just as he’s about to stand up.
I quickly grab his left arm and say, “You promised Malcolm you would try to talk to Helena first. How are you going to do that with a firefight happening directly between us and her?”
“I’ll give her an ultimatum,” he says hurriedly. “If she doesn’t agree to give me the baby when it’s born, then I’ll take him from her now.”
“You can’t do that,” I argue, gripping his arm even more firmly. “It’s not right, Ethan.”
“And letting her keep him is the right thing to do?” he questions incredulously. “That’s not a solution either, Jules. She can’t be allowed to raise Cade’s child and turn him into a monster.”
“If she loves him, she won’t let that happen,” I say. “At least talk to her and see what her plans are for the child.”
“Even her best intentions can’t be trusted. Look at what happened to Cade. She planned for them to make a fresh start on a new planet, yet she killed him because she loved him too much. I can’t let her do that to the baby too.”
“But s
he’s his mother, Ethan! Every child deserves to know that he’s loved by at least one of his parents.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more” we both hear Helena say.
We look directly in front of us and spot Helena standing only about ten feet away from where we’re crouched. Gunfire still rings through the air all around us, ricocheting off of the rocky terrain. Helena stands proudly before us with her shoulders pulled back and her long blonde hair flowing in the breeze of battle like it’s her natural element. The black chiffon dress she’s wearing billows out around her as if it is made of smoke. I take a brief moment to appreciate her gown with its diamond and pearl encrusted cap sleeves and matching empire waist. The dress is pleated in the front, allowing her swollen belly plenty of space to grow.
Ethan stands to his full height from his position behind our rock to face Helena.
“And what exactly will your kind of love do to the child, Helena?” Ethan questions her. “Will it kill him as easily as it did Cade?”
“What happens to my child is none of your concern,” Helena replies angrily. “You and your merry band of War Angels seem to think you know what’s best for my son when the exact opposite is true! Do you honestly believe that a child born from me will be someone you can control? He’ll be more powerful than you can imagine, Ethan. What will you do to Cade’s baby if it turns out to be more of a monster than you believe me to be? Do you imagine you’ll have the strength to kill him in order to protect the ones you love?”
Ethan doesn’t answer right away, and I can tell that he’s carefully thinking about his response before he gives it.
“The boy may be half you, but he’s also half his father. Cade was the best of us all. He had the purest heart, and I have to believe part of his gentle nature was passed on to his son, despite who his mother is.”
Helena doesn’t say anything right away. She simply stands there defiantly, staring Ethan down. I’m not even sure she realizes I’m present, which is probably a good thing. Of the three of us, I’m the most vulnerable to Helena’s powers. I clearly remember my mother’s warning to keep my distance from the embodiment of Hell if at all possible. I’ve always listened to my mom’s advice, and I don’t intend to stop now.
“Then listen to me carefully, Ethan Knight,” Helena begins. “If you think for one moment that I will …”
And then she vanishes.
“Did she just phase?” I call out to Ethan. I assume that’s what she did, but why would she do it mid-sentence? It sounded to me like she was about to tell Ethan he was crazy if he thought she would give him her baby freely. But why phase just before she said it?
Ethan stares at what I presume is Helena’s phase trail. After a few seconds, he turns back around and bends down on one knee in front of me to speak.
“She’s gone back to Hell,” he tells me, sounding just as confused as I am about her abrupt departure.
“Why did she leave so quickly?” I ask. “If I didn’t know any better, I would say something phased her away against her will.”
Ethan stares at me, and I see a look of dawning enter his eyes.
“That might be exactly what happened,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
A bullet from the battle that’s still raging around us strikes the top of the rock we’re behind.
“First things first,” Ethan says, grabbing one of my arms and phasing me back to the safety of my apartment.
The sudden quiet of my home compared to where we just phased from gives me a brief moment of panic that I’ve gone deaf.
Ethan and I both stand up.
“You didn’t get hurt while we were there, did you?” he asks, quickly looking me over to check for any obvious injuries.
“No,” I tell him, secretly pleased by his worry for me. “I’m not hurt.”
Ethan continues to look at me as if he wants to say something but doesn’t really want to. Finally, he tells me, “I need to go back to Cirrus to discuss something with Anna and Malcolm. I think it’s safe to say that Helena won’t be venturing out of Hell again today, so I think we should resume the search tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.”
“Sure,” I say with a small shrug.
“Good.” Ethan gives a small nod of his head. I can tell his mind is racing with thoughts, but he doesn’t seem to want to share any of them with me, at least not yet.
“Are we still having dinner together this evening?” I ask, finding myself hoping that what just happened hasn’t altered those plans. For the first time in a while, I’m looking forward to an evening not spent alone with a bottle in my hands and memories haunting me until I pass out drunk.
Ethan smiles, and I take that as a good sign. “Yes. I’ll be back in about four hours to pick you up.”
“Are we eating inside or outside?”
“Outside.”
“And will it be cold or hot?”
“Warm with a breeze,” Ethan replies, continuing to grin at me.
“Formal or casual?” I have to ask, because how else will I know how to dress myself?
“Casual.”
Ethan stands there looking at me expectantly for a moment before asking, “Is there anything else you need to know?”
I shake my head. “Nah, I think I’ve got it.”
“Okay, I’ll be back to pick you up exactly four hours from now. I look forward to seeing you then.”
Ethan phases, and I find myself alone in my apartment. For some reason, the space feels emptier with his departure. I walk over to the picture frame window facing the city just to feel some sort of connection to the outside world. Usually this is one of the few places where I can find some peace, but now it just seems too quiet, too desolate.
My loneliness swiftly comes to an end when I hear Helena ask, “Why do you choose to live in such squalor?”
CHAPTER 8
I spin around and come face to face with Helena. I won’t lie to myself and say that she doesn’t scare me. She does. And with good reason. I have Hell standing smack dab in the middle of my living room looking slightly pissed off about something. I consider my options for calling for help, but none of them seem likely to work. I left my cell phone in my bedroom earlier and walking past Helena to go get it would certainly tip her off to my intentions. The best thing I can do in this situation is not let her think she scares me, because I believe a show of fear would simply encourage her wrath. I decide to treat her like anyone else who just showed up to my apartment unannounced.
The first and most obvious question I have to ask is, “How did you get in here?”
Helena snorts derisively. “Ethan was stupid enough to phase directly here from the battlefield. I thought I might be able to finish my conversation with him by following, but I see that he’s already left.” Helena looks to her right and squints slightly, presumably looking through Ethan’s phase trail. “Scurried back home to Cirrus and my sister, Anna, I see.”
“If you wanted to finish your conversation with him, why did you leave earlier?” I ask.
“Frankly, that’s none of your business,” she replies brusquely. She looks me up and down like I’m a specimen on a petri dish “I’m glad to see that you’ve finally bathed. The smell of alcohol and uncleanliness on you last night was not very becoming.”
“My mother already pointed that out to me,” I say with a roll of my eyes. All I need is another unwanted lecture. “I didn’t realize I was offending so many people with my personal hygiene habits.”
“Humans tend to be overly polite about such things and allow their friends to run around unkempt. I suggest you find better friends who are more truthful with you.”
I don’t make a reply, because I expect Helena to phase away since Ethan isn’t here.
But she doesn’t. She simply stands where she is examining my apartment with a look of total disdain on her face.
“Is there something else I can help you with?” I ask her.
“I thought Evelyn was quite wealthy in t
his world,” she says, returning her gaze to me but keeping her upper lip curled in open disgust. “Why is it that you live like a beggar?”
I look around my apartment and see nothing wrong with it. Sure, it’s a little sparse on décor, but it’s clean and functional.
“What exactly does my mother having money have to do with the way I live?” I ask her.
“Is Evelyn so greedy that she won’t share her wealth with her own daughter?” Helena asks snidely. “Not very progressive of her, if that’s the case.”
“My mother would give me everything she owns, if I asked her to,” I say defensively. “But I don’t need her money. I can take care of myself.”
Helena raises a dubious eyebrow in my direction. “From where I’m standing, your ability to provide a decent living to survive on is questionable.”
“Don’t you have souls in Hell to torture or something?” I ask her. “Surely you have something better to do than goad me into an argument.”
“Why do I need to go there when I can stay here and accomplish the same thing?”
The smile that appears on Helena’s face tells me that she just made a little joke at my expense and that she finds herself immensely amusing.
I decide to transition the subject away from torture before Helena gets any ideas about switching tactics and turning to a more physical expression of her sadistic side.
“Do you really believe what you told Ethan back on that planet? Do you think your child will turn out to be a monster that no one can control but you?” I ask.
Helena doesn’t respond right away, and I can see her wavering between giving me an answer to my question and remaining mute on the subject. Finally, she makes a decision.
“It’s possible,” she tells me in a reserved voice that gives nothing away about her true feelings concerning her son’s powers.
“Anything is possible,” I point out, taking her response as the non-answer that it was meant to be. “You must have an educated guess on the abilities he’ll be born with or you wouldn’t have said anything to Ethan.”
