by Cecy Robson
Shayna, Emme, and I stopped in to see her before we left Tahoe. If I thought she looked bad before, nothing compared to how we found her. She looked dead. I thought she was by how Tye openly wept at her side. But then she opened her eyes and thanked us for being her friends.
I swallow back the memory, and every speck of sadness I felt when we said our goodbyes. I don’t want that same future for Johnny. I want him to live the long life he deserves.
The crew hurries past me as I wipe my eyes and hop up the stairs leading backstage. Each worker speaks fast and moves faster, distracted by their tasks and the last-minute details to make Johnny shine.
From the other side of the stage, Shayna waves. Koda nods, releasing her cautiously and disappearing into the shadows. Like Gemini, Emme, and Bren, he’ll be guarding the perimeter. I hope we don’t need them, but if we do, they’re the team I want to have our backs.
Johnny peeks out to the arena from his spot behind the curtain. I smile, hoping he’ll return it. As he lets the curtain fall back in place, he does. It’s not much of a grin, but it’s there and I’m happy to see it.
He walks to me slowly, pulling me into a tight embrace. “Thanks, Taran,” he says, speaking slowly. “For everything.”
I’m not what anyone would call a “hugger”. I make the exception for my family and my lover. That’s it. Even when Celia and Aric went through what they went through—and I saw how broken Aric seemed, how lost he was without her, I couldn’t bring myself to hug him. For the most part, I wanted to punch him in the nose.
Johnny is different. He’s not family, but I’ll be damned if I want to let him go. He straightens as he carefully releases me, chuckling when he sees my face.
His gaze softens when I stroke the long blond strands away from his eyes. “I’m going to be all right, mama bear,” he tells me. He looks in the direction of the stage. “No matter what comes, I’m ready for it.”
“I know you are,” I tell him.
The guitar soloist currently blasting away reaches a crescendo, his rapid movements across the strings slowing as he scales down the melody. The crowd goes wild, their collective screaming deafening.
They know who’s ready to take the stage.
At once, the lights go out, taking the shrieks and hollers for Johnny up another notch. With a deep breath he squares his shoulders, leaving me and stepping into the darkness.
Thousands of feet stomp at once, rumbling the floor and adding to the cacophony of noise. But the moment the spotlight flashes on, and Johnny lights up like a burst of lava from a dormant volcano, the noise is too much and my hands slam over my ears.
The screams pain me, threatening to burst my eardrums. It’s only temporary, the agony receding as Johnny drags out the note from the first word he sings.
“Angels.
Angels walk among us.
Holding us when we fall.
Protecting against those who maul our bleeding souls.”
Each verse takes a life of its own, breathing air into the wounded crowd, and giving my heartstrings a pull. Be it magic, or simply Johnny, his talent is unmatched.
I wrap my arms around myself and bow my head. He called me mama bear. I’m not his mama, that’s for damn sure. But between the way he fires my need to protect, and how I feel every time I see Celia stroke her pregnant belly, I’m starting to think that maybe being a mama is a fear I should no longer shy away from.
I think of Gemini, and how he held me last night as we slept.
Maybe it’s time to try a new adventure.
My focus returns to Johnny, the light reflecting like a halo against his skin. It’s amazing to see the way the darkness surrounds him while he stands untouched in the light. He turns back to me and offers me a wink. I smile, flattered.
My phone buzzes in my hand. I expect it to be Gemini, only for Tye’s face to encompass the entire screen.
A horrible chill runs down my spine. “Hello?”
Static fills the line.
“Hello?” I repeat, plugging my opposite ear.
Tye speaks fast, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. The line isn’t clear and his speech is garbled.
“Tye, Tye? . . . I can’t hear you. Slow down.”
I make out only a few words, and I hate every one.
“Dead . . . Destiny is . . . Celia’s children . . .”
“Destiny is dead?” I ask. I cover my mouth, waiting for him to clarify, but the call drops.
I ring him back, only for it to go straight to voice mail. My hand is shaking as I phone Gemini, speaking quickly when he answers. “I think Destiny is dead.”
“What?”
I edge away from the curtain. “Tye just called me. He was upset. The connection was bad and I couldn’t make out what he was saying. He said something about Celia’s children and Destiny being dead.”
He shouts orders to his wolves canvasing the perimeter. “Taran, I need you to stay with Johnny, something’s wrong.”
My thoughts become a muddled mess, thinking Destiny’s demise has started a chain of events that no one could have predicted. “What do you see?” I ask him.
“Nothing. But Destiny can’t be dead. None of my weres guarding her have called.”
“Then call them!” I yell.
“We’re trying.” There’s a pause as a slew of voices speak to Gemini at once. He curses and switches back to me. “No one is getting through, Taran, the texts go unanswered. Someone picks up the line, but no one can hear what they’re saying.”
“What if something attacked them—”
“Then they would be fighting, not answering their phones or trying to make calls. Something is happening. I’m coming for you and Johnny now—”
My phone buzzes again, signaling another call. “It’s Tye,” I say to Gemini. “I’ll call you back.”
“All right, just stay with Johnny. I’m on my way.”
I switch over to Tye’s call. Again, nothing but white noise. “I can’t hear you,” I yell into the phone. “Tell me what’s happening.”
My back slams into the wall and I drop my phone, inundated by an onslaught of magic that paralyzes me.
Destiny appears in my line of vision, her voice hollow and echoing from every direction, and her image a staccato of movement.
“Taran, hear me,” she says.
Glimpses of the backstage intermix with glimpses of Destiny. “Taran, hear me,” she says, her voice growing weaker.
“I hear you,” I say, fighting through the overstimulation of imagery.
She’s in her bed, the one in our basement, her long black hair contrasting deeply against her pale white skin and the ivory robe she’s wearing. She’s almost dead, I know she is.
Her breaths are harsh, labored, every word she expresses appearing to rob her of life. “Fate doesn’t get to decide if Celia’s children will rid the world of evil,” she says. “It’s destiny.”
“What?” I ask. I want to presume she’s delirious, and losing herself as she fades into the light. But there’s a reason she’s reaching out to me so close to death, and I’ll be damned if I don’t pay attention.
“Destiny, tell me what’s happening,” I plead.
The barrage of images separating my reality from my connection to her dwindles and I start to see more of the dark curtains swaying in front of me. “Uh-uh, girl,” I tell her, spitting each syllable out through my teeth. “Don’t you leave me now.”
A flash of her face appears and she slowly blinks her eyes open. “That’s it, baby,” I say. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Johnny’s singing fades, as do my surroundings, leaving only Destiny. “Fate doesn’t get to decide if Celia’s children will rid the world of evil,” she repeats. “It’s destiny.”
“Okay, I heard you,” I say carefully. “Now tell me what you mean.”
Tears swim in her eyes, releasing one by one. “Evil has known about you and your sisters since the dawn of creation, and long before it first cursed your family.” More tears fall
, her weakness overtaking her, but her anger pushing her forward.
I’m crying, too, for what she’s enduring and how much it hurts her to speak. “What has evil known?” I press.
Almost at once, her tears dry up, her stare determined even as the rest of her body betrays her. “That your children will rise against it.” She swallows hard. “Fate knows it, too . . . He’s been leeching my power in order to kill them all.”
I feel myself rise from the position on the floor, the slow thuds of my heartbeat speeding up and growing pronounced.
“Johnny is leeching your power?” I manage. I turn in the direction of where I think the stage is, but all I see is Destiny.
“Yes,” Destiny says, her remaining strength quickly leaving her. “You have to kill Johnny, Taran. In order for your children to face their destiny, their fate with death must be destroyed.”
I barely believe what she’s saying, my insides sinking into the floor. But I’m listening. God damn it, I have to. “Johnny is their fate with death?” I stammer.
“Yes,” she answers.
And then she’s gone.
Chapter Twenty-Four
When I was a little girl, I used to have nightmares about my parents dying. I used to dream of dark caskets being lowered deep into the ground. I couldn’t see them, but I knew it was them.
“Don’t cry,” Daddy used to say as he held me. “It was only a dream.”
Until it wasn’t.
I blink my eyes against my bleak surroundings, staring at the pull ropes and heavy curtains for what seems like too long. What happened to my parents was a nightmare that came true, all because long ago, when the world first began, Evil and Good decided to battle it out, and Good determined we would stand among its warriors.
I turn in the direction of the stage, my lightning cracking against my fingers as my balled hands open wide. Too many times I’ve wished for my daddy to hold me again, to wrap me in his protection and love, to assure me that all the bad was just a dream and only good awaited now.
Except this isn’t a nightmare. It’s my fucking reality where I have to choose between a young man’s life and children yet to be born.
It should be an easy choice. I’ve known Johnny a handful of weeks. These are my children I’m speaking of, our children, mine, Shayna’s, Emme’s, and Celia’s. Celia who is already carrying the fate of the future in her womb—
Fate.
There’s a word.
No, there’s a person.
God help me. No matter how easy this choice should be, it’s not.
I step on stage. Johnny’s fans are so mesmerized by his melodious voice, they don’t notice me. They don’t even notice the call of wolves, surrounding the arena. From every side a wolf is howling, alerting their kind it’s time to fight.
Something is wrong. Gemini called it.
And it’s up to me to make it right.
“T!” Shayna yells from the other side of stage, the swords she holds in each hand elongating. “Shifters and neophytes are invading the arena, we have to get Johnny out of here . . .”
I stop noticing her, my focus completely on Johnny as my lightning charges and the spark within me surges like a wicked storm. One strike, that’s all it will take given the gamut of electrical energy crackling the air and readying to unleash.
But while Johnny’s fans don’t see me, he does.
His face is turned in my direction, his features sullen as thick tears soak my skin.
“The devil comes out to play,” he sings.
The peacock tat on his belly comes to life, much to the “oo’s” and “ah’s” of Johnny’s audience.
“Sometimes he needs to stay,” Johnny sings.
The peacock looks at me and spreads its wings. What appear to be rocks roll from the eyes of the feathers as it shakes them out.
“To hear my will and help me be.”
They stop at my feet. I see them. I do. But I see my target more.
Johnny finishes the melody, drawing out the last two words. “And to give your lives to protect me.”
The rocks at my feet tip from side to side, tilting up, revealing empty eye sockets and missing teeth.
Skulls.
Just like in my damn visions.
Fuck you, Johnny Fate.
They clatter across the stage as more fall away from the tail feathers. They could be bombs, or something more. It doesn’t matter, they won’t be enough to stop me.
Bottom line, our babies are the ones who need to stay. Fate, his ass needs to go.
“This is how it’s going to be?” Johnny asks, his betrayed tone resonating across the arena. Ironic, seeing he’s the one betraying us.
“This is how it has to be,” I reply. My stare falls to his chest as the tat of the serpent circling the heart comes alive. It constricts the heart, holding it in place when it quivers and opening its maw wide.
Long fangs pierce the center, puncturing deep and making it bleed.
I fall backward, clenching my head when Destiny screams.
My hands slip through my hair and smack against the floor when the truth hits me at once. Destiny is the heart. Fate is the serpent.
I get it now, and does that shit ever make me move fast.
I scramble to my feet as the rafters shake above us, matching the increasing clamor from the skulls. I kick the skulls out of my way as a man dressed in black robes leaps on stage. I presume he’s a neophyte. I also presume he needs to die.
The strobe of light he carries expands in his hand, bleaching his wrinkled face and dark eyes as he spits out a curse. Shayna leaps in front of him, just missing the charge of lightning I send sailing, and slices his head off with her sword.
The strobe crashes against the stadium floor, exploding in a flood of power that flings her across the stage and tosses me against the far wall.
I don’t stop moving, my lightning shooting toward Johnny. I scream when it collides against the fans who throw themselves in its path.
Johnny is using his magic to seduce and lure his fans. Everyone in the audience is clamoring up on stage to shield him, climbing all over each other in their desperation to protect him.
I lose him in the crowd overtaking the stage, calling my fire when bodies in black armor form and rise beneath the skulls.
Shayna rushes to my side, ramming her sword into the eye socket of the warrior who lunges.
Her sword smokes and the skull splits in half. She yanks out the blade, gasping as the magic eats away at the metal. “What are they?” she asks, pushing her power into the blade so it mends and sharpens.
“Whatever Johnny wants them to be.” My lightning strikes, taking out the next few warriors who advance, as well as another human rushing to fight for Johnny.
“Damn it!” I yell.
“T, we can’t attack, not without killing the humans,” Shayna pleads. “They’ll die for him.”
“We don’t have a choice,” I say, tears dribbling down my cheeks. “Johnny has been draining Destiny’s power.” I lash out, jolting another warrior who charges and stunning a woman with long black hair. My lightning electrifies the piercings along her bottom lip, burning her mouth. I sob as she falls to the floor screaming.
“T, I can’t,” Shayna says, watching the woman clutching her face writhe in agony.
“Shayna, we have to.” I take a breath, trying to keep it together as I send more lightning soaring across the tightening expanse. “Destiny says if Johnny doesn’t die, our kids will meet their fate with death.”
Her face goes white. “Our kids?”
“Our babies, Shayna,” I rasp. “Just like we’ve stood by Celia, our children will stand with hers.”
She hesitates for just a moment before slashing her sword across the shoulders of three more warriors. Their bodies slump, their heads rolling away from them, and still more come.
I scan the arena, watching helplessly as Johnny’s fans lead him further away and Koda’s howl reverberates in the distance. “Where
are the wolves?”
“With the shifters, T. There’s at least two and a whole army of neophytes.” She brings down her sword on the head of another warrior. The skull cracks and the body slumps, but these things are everywhere and drawing closer.
“We need to take out Johnny!” I holler over the growing chaos.
He’s almost to the door and all we’re doing is backing further away from him.
She slices the limbs off the warrior, trying to grab her. “We also need to get these people out of here.”
My lightning explodes two more skulls, their remains falling against a small man with a long beard. She’s right. We have to get the humans out. I just don’t know how.
The doors leading to the food court bust free from their metal frames when an elephant-sized grizzly bear demolishes its way through. Pack wolves cling to it, trying to bring it down. I know it’s a shifter, its immense size and the way it mows through the fans continuing to rush toward Johnny, proclaim it loud and clear.
The weres fighting it are not alone. Emme races in behind Bren’s large wolf form. Even from this distance she sees us, and her eyes lock on me. It’s the only warning I receive before she lifts me and Shayna with her force and hurls us at the arena floor.
Shayna howls, her high-pitched battle cry and the light reflecting from her spinning swords alerting everyone in the vicinity that she’s coming, she’s ready, and to get the hell out of her way unless they’re prepared to die.
From the moment my feet leave the floor, I’m screaming my mother-fucking head off.
Emme has bad aim. Horrible aim. Dear God, I’m going to die.
The floor packed with people comes at me at full speed. I crash into a beefy guy with way too many piercings, but just enough bulge to keep me from landing spread eagle with a splat.
Shayna descends doing some sort of flippy thing, housing her swords the minute her feet connect with the concrete, and reaching for her toothpicks.
I peel myself off the pleasantly plump guy, jerking my foot when he snags my ankle. “Don’t hurt Johnny!” he yells at me.
“Fuck off,” I yell at him.
I zap him with a jolt of lightning and crawl away, hurrying to my feet and taking point behind Shayna as those rising to protect Johnny close in.
