“Leni, what’s the rush?”
She threw my jeans and t-shirt at me. “I feel it. We have to get out of here. They’re coming again.”
Her panic got to me, and I began to dress as hurriedly as she did. “Who?”
“The Shadowmen. They’re coming to kill us. That’s what they do.”
I stood up and buttoned my fly. “How do you know this?”
“I don’t know.” She glanced around the camper as if it held answers. “I just do. I feel it. We have to get to the mansion, like right now.”
My own heart flew into a panic now, and I stopped mid-motion, my shirt in my hands. “No fucking way. We’re not going there.”
She spun on me, her face filled with disbelief. “We have to!”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Why?”
My stomach dropped as the memories flooded over me again. My throat tightened. “I’m not doing that to you again, Leni. Please understand.”
Her expression morphed from anger to understanding. “You blame yourself,” her voice said softly in my head. “You think you killed Jacey . . . you killed me.”
“How could I not?” I demanded. “It was my fault. I should have never taken you there. I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
“But Jeric, it wasn’t—”
“Forget it, Leni!” I silently yelled. “You don’t exactly have the best instincts, remember?”
Her face fell, and guilt stabbed my heart with the low blow, especially because I felt the pull, too, stronger than it had been for days. But I also remembered what had happened last time, when she’d been too out of it to know.
“We’re not going,” I said. “End of discussion.”
I charged out of the camper door, turned in a circle under the awning and pushed my hands through my hair, not knowing what to do, where to go. Leni’s fear about the Shadowmen felt very real, but so was my fear of going to the mansion. I wasn’t taking her into that fiasco again.
Too many people had died because of me in that last life, including Jacey. Although I’d hurt a lot of people in this one—physically and emotionally—my body count was zero, despite what my grandfather chose to believe about my parents and my sister. Leni was absolutely not about to become the first.
CHAPTER 35
I sat in a chair in the darkened room, my elbows on my knees as I stared out the window, my head pounding as I tried to figure out what to do. Jacey lay in the bed, coming in and out of consciousness, her body weakening by the hour. But it was the look in her eyes that would forever haunt me. The gleam of life behind them slipping away. She kept insisting we continue on, but I had no way of following the pull. Not when it came from the middle of the water. And not with all those Shadowmen out there.
Several large, dark shadows flew wide circles in the sky, buzzards waiting for us to come out. I had no idea how many more lurked on the ground in the shadows of the building and trees around us, but the scene felt way too familiar. I was not leading her to her death as I’d done to my brothers.
I closed my eyes, unable to fight the memories.
A special ops mission in the Middle East only those with the highest of clearances knew about. My team of six men who were like brothers to me crouching in an abandoned building on the outskirts of the city. Across the street was a secured compound where a covert meeting of known terrorists was taking place. We were to go in, make the kill, and get out. But the target had way too many bodyguards surrounding the compound. One bad move on our part, by any one of us, and we’d blow the whole mission.
My men wanted to move in. I wanted to analyze the situation further, knowing there had to be another way. But we were running out of time. Fast.
“Let’s do it, sir,” Jeeves whispered from his crouched position next to me. “We got this. Let’s kill these camel-fuckers and get the hell out.”
He was just a kid. We all were really. At twenty-two, I was one of the oldest on the team. And the one in charge.
I knew there were too many guns out there. I should have never done what I did.
But still, I gave the order.
We charged out of our hole, everyone firing as we went. Gunfire filled the quiet night, and the bodyguards immediately shot back. We took down two. Three. A fourth. Then we lost control of the situation. I lost control. Smoke and the smell of gunpowder filled the air as my men began dropping in front of me. One after another. Until they were all down.
My men.
My brothers.
The only family I’d ever felt was real.
Gone.
All of them.
The details of what happened next were unclear. A backup team had arrived right as we’d moved in, but I hadn’t known. Otherwise, I would have waited for them to get into position. And my men, my brothers, would still be alive. Instead, only I survived. The backup team completed our mission. Every accolade I was given for my efforts and sacrifice felt like a punch in the nuts, a reminder of those who had made the true sacrifice. I couldn’t wait for the day of my discharge. It should have been dishonorable.
I opened my eyes and rubbed my hand over my face, not surprised to find it moist with tears. I wasn’t about to take Jacey into that same situation. I’d thought we’d found backup when the people had pulled us into this abandoned hotel on the water’s edge, thinking we’d found others like us, trying to help. But they’d led us into this room and left, not to be seen again. Besides, there were only two of them and two of us. We didn’t even have Sammy anymore. He’d taken off, deeper into the building when we’d come in, and I hadn’t seen him since. And there were a dozen or two Shadowmen out there, not counting the ones I couldn’t see.
No, I wasn’t doing it again.
I’d survived the death of my brothers. Of having to face their wives and parents because I’d felt I needed to. I owed that much to them. Each visit was harder than the previous one, creating another crack in my heart.
But losing Jacey would break it completely. Kill me. Literally.
“Micah,” Jacey whispered from the bed.
I went over to it and crawled in beside her. I slipped one arm under her pillow and the other over her waist and pulled her back against my chest. She was already sleeping again. The pain in my head grew, spreading to my entire body. I fell unconscious beside her. It’s just the flu, I told myself, and later Jacey, as we both floated in and out of consciousness.
I awoke one time to voices outside the door. I couldn’t make out the words, but the anxious tones worried me. At some point, without realizing what I was actually doing but knowing I needed to get Jacey out of there—away from these people, away from the Shadowmen, far, far away, or shit, I was going to lose her—I forced myself out of the bed and lifted her into my arms. She felt like she’d gained fifty pounds in the hours since I’d first brought her in, but it wasn’t her. I’d grown too weak. I stumbled. We both fell. The door flew open.
I didn’t understand this couple who were no older than us. They acted like they wanted to help, but they did nothing. Made no sense when they spoke, something about re-Bonding and dying. When they left, Jacey rolled to face me.
“Who are they?” she asked.
I used what little energy I had left to turn to her. “I don’t know. They said they could help us, but they haven’t done anything but—”
Her face contorted and distress filled her dull eyes. She grasped my hand and squeezed it tightly.
“Micah,” she gasped.
“I’m here, babe.”
“It burns.” Her lungs wheezed. “Micah . . . finish the journal for me . . . okay?”
“What?”
“Just . . . promise. Write this . . . all down. Okay?”
“I promise.”
“I . . . love—”
Pain ripped through my chest. I was losing her.
“No, Jacey. Don’t do this. Stay with me.”
“I . . . love you.”
“Help!” I yelled. “Hurry!”
“Always have . . . always . . . will.”
“I love you, too, Jacey. But don’t . . . Hang on, babe. Don’t do this.” I screamed as loudly as I could muster. “Get in here! She needs help!”
The door finally flew open and the overhead light came on, but the young couple hadn’t returned. Instead, an older, familiar looking man came rushing in. He looked exactly like the portrait Jacey had drawn of her Pops in her sketchbook. But how? Wasn’t he dead? Behind him stood a woman with chin-length, dirty-blond hair—shorter than the last time I’d seen her. My foster mother, Angie.
“I’m sorry, son, but we have to do this,” Jacey’s Pops said as he moved to her side of the bed. “You didn’t get there this time. If we wait, we could lose you both for good.”
Panic rose within me but I was too weak to fight. Angie stepped over to my side and grasped my hand between both of hers. I tried to yank free, to throw myself over Jacey’s still body, knowing I needed to protect her from whatever this man—this man who was supposed to love her, who had taken care of her for half her life—whatever it was he was about to do. Because I knew it wasn’t good.
“Shh,” Angie whispered beside me, holding my hand more tightly than should have been possible for her size. “It’s the only way, Jeremicah.” She nodded at the older man whose palms hovered close to Jacey’s chest. “Go ahead. It has to be done.”
His hands lowered. Jacey’s body jerked, and searing pain ripped through my chest. I fought against Angie’s hold, but now she was practically on top of me, holding me down. I writhed against the torture in my body, in my heart, in my soul. A string of profanities and unintelligible sounds erupted as Jacey’s soul was ripped from mine.
The old man’s hands came away from Jacey’s chest, cupped together as if he held something within them.
“We’ll give you some time,” Angie said, “but we have to return for you. It’s the only way.”
I ignored the meaning of her words, pushed them far out of my mind as they both seemed to simply disappear from the room. Perhaps they’d gone through the door, but I didn’t know. I was too focused on Jacey next to me.
I pulled her into my arms, but my mind and soul already knew what my heart refused to admit.
She was gone. Only a body here in my arms, nothing in it anymore. Nothing entwined with me, my soul.
I’d lost Jacey. I’d brought her here when I shouldn’t have. I’d kept us here too long. And I’d lost her, the only person I’d ever loved.
I’d failed her completely.
CHAPTER 36
“Jeric.”
I jumped at the sound in my head, not used to hearing anything but my own thoughts. I sat on the picnic table, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. Leni squatted in front of me with her hands on either side of my head. She forced me to look up at her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, apparently seeing Micah’s pain in my eyes. My pain.
I gulped against the thickness in my throat.
“How can you even stand to look at me? How do you not hate me? Or at least blame me?”
Obviously, she wouldn’t be here now if Jacey had lived. Neither of us would be. We’d be in our forties, probably even married, little Micahs and Jaceys running around. I’d taken all of that from her. Just as I’d taken it from my brothers in that past life.
“What do you mean? I could never hate you. And the only thing I blame you for is being too obstinate to listen to me.”
“I killed you, Leni. I led you right to your death.”
Her brows pushed together as she stared at me for a long moment, then understanding seemed to wash over her.
“You mean Jacey?”
I blew out a heavy sigh. “Yes, Jacey. And almost killed you, too, by going to the mansion, leading you right into the pit of the Shadowmen. Again.”
She shook her head, and her perfect lips lifted in a small smile. “You didn’t do anything, Jeric. Micah . . . you . . . it wasn’t your fault.”
“Of course it is. I couldn’t protect you.”
She pressed her finger to my mouth, although I didn’t speak aloud. “While you’ve been sitting out here feeling all remorseful, I realized why I feel such a sense of urgency to go. I remembered something. It wasn’t you or Micah or anything you did that caused Jacey’s death. The two of us—our disbelief, our inability to remember everything, our delay—caused it. Caused both of us to leave that life.”
Now my turn to look confused.
CHAPTER 37
My hands clasped over Jeric’s, and I tugged, trying to pull him to his feet. He reluctantly obeyed and followed me into the camper. Good, because we needed intimacy, and I wasn’t about to try this outside. I pushed him onto the futon, and then straddled his lap. My hands braced his head as I leaned in and pressed my forehead to his, our noses barely touching, our lips only centimeters apart.
“I thought you were in a hurry,” Jeric said in my head. Relief filled his tone, glad I wasn’t forcing the issue of going to the mansion. I knew, or at least hoped, that before long, I wouldn’t be forcing him. He’d know it was the right thing to do.
“What we do when we . . . um . . .” I blushed, embarrassment combining with the heat of the memory flustering me. “You know, when we leave our bodies?”
“When we come?” he said with a teasing smile.
My skin flushed hotter. “Yeah. That. But what we do that you said has never happened to you before? The leaving our body thing? I once read this book called Intrinsical and the characters left their bodies, too. It’s called astral projection. I think that’s what we did, and I want to do it again.”
“Any time,” he said with a grin as his hands slid down my back to my butt.
“But without the sex,” I added.
His grin fell into a frown. “What fun is that?”
“I think this is something we’re supposed to be able to do as dyads,” I said. “And I also think we’re supposed to be able to do it when we want, not just because we’ve exploded from our bodies in a heightened physical state. We need to practice. I feel like it’s really important.”
He eyed me. “This is what you remembered? Much better than my own memory.”
“Actually, this is what I feel we need to do. I think if we can do this, if we can do the Bonding thing, you’ll remember what I did. And you’ll stop blaming yourself.”
He narrowed his eyes, catching on to my scheme to change his mind about going.
“Please, Jeric,” I nearly begged before he protested. “Trust me on this.”
“Fine. I’m game. How?”
This part I didn’t know. Based on Jacey’s journal, she and Micah had never done it but the one time on accident, but I felt like we—Jacquelena and Jeremicah—had projected many times before. I just couldn’t grasp any memories of it.
“Maybe if we imagine the feeling, try to recreate it without, you know, the action part of it.”
He looked at me skeptically. With our foreheads still pressed together, it was difficult to look into his eyes without going cross-eyed, so I closed mine, and I tried to imagine the sensation of the physical orgasm and the release of my soul.
“Leni?” Jeric whispered in my mind.
“Hmm?” I asked, still trying to concentrate, though it didn’t seem to be working.
“Can I at least kiss you? Because you keep licking those perfect lips of yours and you’re grinding yourself against me and I can’t . . .”
My eyes flew open, and I pulled back. I hadn’t realized I’d been doing either one of those things.
He groaned. “Don’t stop!”
He pulled my face closer to him, his gaze on my mouth the entire time until he brought it to his. I closed my eyes again as I lost myself in the kiss. Passion rushed through my body, but it was exactly what I needed, so I deepened the kiss, hoping he felt it, too.
“Try to leave your body,” I whispered as I felt my soul beginning to rise.
“But it feels so good. You feel so good.�
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I couldn’t argue with that, but we really didn’t have time to let our physical selves rule. We needed to be able to do this.
“Jeric, please. Come with me.”
I didn’t know exactly how he took my meaning, but he moaned into my mouth and the next thing I knew, we both hovered over our bodies. Our energies automatically came together and rejoined our souls into one. The rest of Jacey’s and Micah’s story—of our story—danced on the edge of our memory, slowly coming into reach until it consumed us, and we were again in the Space Between with the Keeper.
“At least the two of you found each other, and you left your mark,” the Keeper was saying.
“Our mark?” I—Jacey—thought of the tattoos on our wrists.
“The journal,” he said. “The Book of Phoenix. You have helped the next souls who find it, giving them enough guidance so hopefully they will move to the Gate faster. You see, once your souls find each other, the Lakari can detect you. They will try to stop you from re-Bonding and from reaching the Gate. If they can, they will kill you and take your souls to Enyxa. The faster you re-Bond and the faster you get to the Gate, the more likely your survival in that life so you can serve your missions. We try to leave clues for future souls, to help them move to the Gate sooner rather than later. You left The Book of Phoenix.”
“Well, it would have been nice if someone had left clues for us,” I said.
“The Phoenix probably thought they had, bringing you together at a former portal to the Gate.”
“A portal? Wait, in the apartment building? That’s why I felt so disoriented in the hidden space?”
“Yes, child. The portal has been closed for safety reasons, but the Phoenix had hoped you would make the connection. And the Book itself offers clues on its cover. There’s more to the Book than you know, the reason the Lakari desire it.”
His instructions we couldn’t remember previously also returned to our memory.
“Jeremicah,” he’d said, “you must let go of the guilt and blame. It is not your fault you are here, either of you. And you must remember to follow instinct. Not only yours, but Jacquelena’s, too. She is your torch, lighting your way.” He focused on me now. “Jacquelena, you must believe in yourself. Believe in your instinct, especially if and when you find each other and begin to remember. And most especially after you re-Bond—the new energy will be strong and will draw the Lakari to you. You must get to the Gate as quickly as possible or risk becoming Dark. Whatever happens, however unbelievable anything seems, you must believe. And you MUST NOT DELAY!”
Curses, Fates & Soul Mates Page 33
