In the distance, the sirens shut off abruptly.
“Shit, there went the power.” Rhett had to shout to be heard over the roar.
Metal barrels, tools and other items inside the hangar clanked and clattered, some falling noisily onto the cement floor. From the ground, it looked like a giant hand had grabbed hold of the earth and given it a violent shake.
The temblor came to a slow, rolling stop, as if it was loathe to end its reign of terror.
“You all right, Evelyn?” Rhett came over when he could walk and helped her up.
“I'm fine. They're getting worse. We have to get the plane in the air before the runway is destroyed.” A glance assured her that the rift they'd started helping Roman fill hadn't grown wider or deeper.
Luck was with them. For how much longer, she couldn't say.
†
“Ready for take off,” Roman said over the speakers.
An hour later, the jet sat at the end of the runway. Evelyn slumped in a seat, exhausted, and accepted a bottle of water she and Rhett shared.
“Thanks.”
“How're you feeling? All right?” Rhett asked. He, like the rest of them, had dirt and grime everywhere. His boots had mud caked halfway over the arches.
“Good, I'm good,” she reassured him. Drinking the contents down to half, she offered it back.
“There's more in the back. Finish that if you want,” he said.
“I'm all right for now. Besides, we'll probably have to leave one or two for Roman and take more with us when we land-- by the way, where are we going, anyway?” she asked.
The jet picked up speed, gaining forward momentum at a rapid clip, making her stomach sink to her toes. Lifting off, it ascended at a dizzying pace.
Rhett took the water back but stuck it in a holder on the small table in front of them. “England. Northumberland, to be exact.”
“Well. At least it's not China or something.” Evelyn tried to find the positives. Any view she might have had out the small oval window got obliterated by the thick gray clouds. She was half convinced that even if they stopped the rest of the apocalypse, that the sky would never again be clear of the thunderheads.
“Not yet,” Rhett said.
Looking aside, she lifted her hand to smudge her thumb over a few scratches on his whiskered cheek. They'd scabbed over by now, joined by a streak or two of dirt.
“You've got a full fledged beard going on here,” she remarked.
“Not quite. Almost though. Do you like it?”
“It makes you look...older.”
“Is that a bad thing?” He arched a brow.
“No. I like you with a few whiskers,” she admitted.
“We've been down this road before. You know what I'm going to ask next.”
“No I don't.”
“What else do you like?”
Evelyn laughed. Yes, they had been down this road before. The gravity of their situation meant she couldn't sustain humor for too long. He must have read it in her eyes.
“Don't go getting serious on me just yet. We've had far too few times when I can just enjoy your laughter.”
She glanced away from the ceiling to his face. “I think you look more handsome than usual all rugged and dirty like this.”
“Even when I get all spiffed up?”
Evelyn laughed again. The word 'spiffed' on Rhett's tongue seemed odd and out of place. “Yes, I think so. You wear the Mad Max look well.”
He snorted and got that devil-may-care gleam in his eyes she'd appreciated so much way back at the first safe house in Athens.
“I wear you well.”
“Rhett!” Aghast, she darted a look over at the other seats to see if his father heard.
“You think he doesn't know? Of course he knows. None of us would be here otherwise.”
“You wouldn't have done it just for the good of humanity?” Evelyn's attention swung right back.
Rhett thought about it. Thrusting a hand through his hair, he let his gaze go distant somewhere ahead of them in the plane. “Probably. If someone had presented it to me the right way. I'm really not as noble as you think I am.”
“Yes you are. I knew that about you on the boat ride from Athens to Egypt.”
“What makes you think so?” he asked.
“It's just something about you. Which really isn't a cop out or a cheap answer.”
Rhett arched a brow. The look by itself was a challenge to explain better.
Evelyn licked her lips and put more thought behind it.
“You didn't kill those Templars in the basement when you found me. And you could have. Brethren or not, you probably had the right. Then later, you constantly put yourself between me and the bullets. You got annoyed and frustrated when I got off the boat in Crete, which told me that you take your job seriously and you hated that I'd slipped out of your net of protection.”
“All of that can be explained away by my duty to my job. The oaths I took.”
“Are you fishing for more compliments?” She smiled despite herself.
He laughed. A raspy grate of sound she always found appealing.
“Not at all. None of that strikes me as extraordinarily noble, though.”
“Are you always this argumentative?” Of course he was. It was one of the things she liked about him.
“It's what you like best about me.” His grin was downright deviant.
She laughed when he plucked her thoughts right out of her mind. “You're impossible.”
“You've said that before, too.”
“I've said a lot of things before.”
“Which one is the most true?”
“I...” love you. That was not a sentiment she'd spoken aloud, yet it was the first one that came to mind. He'd guessed on the boat, so it wasn't a surprise. Evelyn wanted the circumstances to be more memorable when she said that for the first time. Girlishly, she had visions of some park-like setting, dinner by candlelight and a sparkling lake at midnight.
“You what?” he pressed. Like he knew.
Evelyn gave him a wan look. “I think your tattoo is sexy.”
Now there was something she'd never expected to come out of her mouth.
Instead of pressing for the real answer, he laughed. “I think you should get one, too.”
Shocked, she looked over. “What?”
“A tattoo.”
“Of what?”
“An apple.”
Her mouth twitched with humor. “Really.”
“Yes. It's so...contemporary.”
“I'm surprised you didn't suggest fig leaves over my boobs.” Alexandra would have been proud of her for that quip.
Rhett guffawed, drawing several pairs of eyes their way. “I'd pay money to see that. Temporary, though, not permanent.”
“Why not permanent?”
His gaze dropped to her chest. “Because that would be a waste of perfection.”
“You're a devil.” She swatted his arm.
“Are you complaining?” he asked, grinning.
“Never.” Against all odds, Rhett succeeded in giving her more to think about than the catastrophes spreading out across the earth below.
Chapter Six
Across the aisle, Alexandra listened to her sister and Rhett banter. Sitting this close, it was impossible not to hear. She had to admit that it pleased her to see Evelyn respond to a man instead of keep him at arms length. For years she'd tried to get her to engage in something more than a passing affair and it did her heart good to know that, for a short while at least, Evelyn would know true love.
Alexandra realized what a hypocrite she was. She too had spent her life avoiding any serious relationships, though there had been one or two men over the centuries that had tempted her to throw caution to the wind and just enjoy it. That niggling voice never quite left her alone, however, the one that consistently whispered, you'll wind up with a broken heart, you can't confess, you'll have to watch him die sooner or later.
It had been
enough for most of the girls to invest in brief relationships and no more. Minna, who had more control than any of them, was the exception. Her relationship with Mark lasted a decade, right up until the risk of him noticing she didn't age at all, and he did, forced her to leave him.
Alexandra hadn't ever asked Minna if she'd suffered a broken heart or regret over it, because everything unwound so fast in Greece.
With centuries of life behind her, only now did she lament the lack of time they had to talk about mundane things. She realized, in a startling moment of clarity, that she'd taken too much for granted.
Her sisters, life, the state of the world.
“You're thoughtful,” Dracht said beside her.
Thinking he'd been asleep, his voice startled her. She glanced over. His goatee had grown out into a heavy layer of whiskers—like the other men—and his armor was dusty from all the shoveling.
“Just thinkin' about time,” she admitted.
“That you need more of it, or that you've had enough already?” he asked.
“You're pretty astute for an old guy.”
He laughed.
She continued, “That I'd like to have more of it, I guess. Also that I've taken a lot of things for granted.”
“People tend to do that. It's easy to get distracted.”
Dracht had a deep, resonant voice that Alex secretly admired. The kind of voice that crawled under your skin and sent waves of heat through your system.
“I guess so. If everything goes the way it should, I'm gonna try not to do that anymore.”
“What, take things for granted?” he asked.
“Mm. Or people.”
“You thinking about Galiana and Genevieve?”
Alex met Dracht's gaze. “Among others.”
He glanced over at Evelyn and Minna, then back. “Everything feels different when we think we've lost control of our own lives. I bet you've never really taken them for granted, you only feel like you have because the future is so uncertain.”
“I can be a selfish person.”
“Selfish, or just living life to the fullest? You don't think your sisters haven't done the same?” he asked.
Alexandra hesitated over her answer. All of her sisters, even the deceased, had done all the things they'd wanted: travel, business, love—or lack of it—adventure. She'd never felt like any of them had taken her for granted, only that everyone was always busy. Bustling here or there. Maybe Dracht was right. Maybe it was not knowing whether there would be a tomorrow that made her suddenly introspective and brooding.
“Haven't you wondered whether you're ready to check out or not yet?”
“I don't have any regrets, Alex.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
“But it's what you meant.”
She couldn't decide if she was annoyed or surprised that he was right. Instead of studying him, she studied her fingers.
“How come you're not married?” she asked, switching the subject.
“Who said I wasn't?”
Alex snapped a look over at him. Dracht eyed her in a way that told her he wasn't married, but he'd wanted to gauge her reaction to the thought.
Which only made her thoughts churn in other directions she didn't want them to. Dracht had been through a lot with her in the past several weeks. In his quiet, strong way, he'd done the things he'd needed to without complaint or hesitation. Alex had come to depend on him in ways she hadn't with any other man, and perhaps it was just their circumstance that made her feel close to him.
Anyone in her position would react the same. Still, something else niggled at her, kept trying to burrow down beyond her stubborn determination to deny there was anything else between them.
If she was honest with herself, she was damn glad he wasn't married, and the idea of him becoming as immortal as her filled her with a sense of relief.
The gloom out the small windows deepened until the darkness of night swallowed even the iron gray clouds.
†
“Everyone buckle down, it's going to be a rough landing,” Roman said over the intercom.
Evelyn twitched awake when Rhett loomed over her to do up her buckle.
“What's going on?” Sitting up, she yawned and tried to clear her mind of cobwebs.
“We're about to land in Northumberland. They've got power but half the lights are out on the runway and it's probably going to be a little bumpy.” Rhett sat next to her and strapped himself in.
“How long have I been asleep?” she asked, looking out the window.
“This time? A little over two hours.”
She'd fallen asleep not long after their conversation, and had woken up for the fiasco of refueling in France. Three airports, four arguments and one fight with an attendant later, they'd filled the tanks and taken off for England.
Apparently, after a bathroom break, dinner of fruit and a bottle of water, she'd gone out again. A glance at the windows indicated dawn, such as it was with its monochrome theme, hadn't broken over the horizon yet.
She heard Alexandra talking to Dracht and Minna walked down the aisle to her seat from the restroom at the back. Christian and Dragar, in the seats behind her, fastened their buckles with audible clicks.
“How rough do you think it'll be?” she asked Rhett, making sure he'd secured himself like everyone else. The armor made it a little awkward for him to maneuver easily in the confined space.
“Hard to say. Roman's pretty experienced and I don't think we'll have to contend with any other planes on the runway, at least.”
“Why are only some of the lights out?”
“That's a good question. Maybe someone else had a difficult landing when all this started. Imagine how many planes were in the air when the sun went black.”
He had a good point.
The jet started its descent, lowering through the cloud cover toward the runway. Evelyn couldn't see much out the window, not yet. When the landing gear came down from under the belly of the bird, she heard the hum and clank of metal.
Her stomach flip-flopped as the jet descended quicker. This time, she yawned on purpose to help her ears pop. Out the small window, pin dots of light over a dark landscape came into view. Not many, and certainly not enough to suggest a metropolis lurked nearby.
This was the sparse scatter of light in the countryside, where homes sat spaced apart rather than in clusters.
“Hold on.” Roman's voice over the intercom sounded tense.
In turn, it made her tense.
Rhett brushed his hand over hers on the arm rest. “Don't worry.”
“I'm not worried,” she lied.
“You're grinding your teeth.”
She was, and it made her jaw ache.
“I can't help it. What if he misses the runway?”
Rhett laughed, a low sound that didn't carry far. “I'm going to nickname you Miss Optimistic.”
She scowled. “He wouldn't warn us if he didn't think there could be issues.”
“Are you going to get feisty with me?”
She could tell he was trying not to grin. “What do you mean 'going to'. Aren't I that already?”
“Oh, sassy, too. No wonder I like you.”
The angle of descent increased and it felt like the jet sped up. Evelyn pushed back against her seat, fingers digging into the arm rest. She hated landing more than anything else. Especially this landing, with the runway in questionable condition. There were four or five different quips on her tongue to volley back, but the wheels made contact with the tarmac.
They bounced back up into the air a few feet. The speed seemed incredible, almost too fast for a landing, and she felt the wheels make contact again.
The nose of the jet came down right after, a smoother transition.
Then Roman applied the brakes so hard it threw her forward, secured to the seat by the belt. Rhett lurched forward and behind her, she heard Dragar grunt in surprise.
“He's got it, we're all right,” Rhett said once they wer
e sitting back in their seats.
The hard braking continued, forcing her to brace herself just to keep her spine against the cushion.
“I'm just glad there's still a runway here.” The last one they'd been on hadn't been in great shape.
Slowing further, Roman taxied them off the main runway to another that led them closer to a row of one story buildings. Lights on the outsides showed some to be hangars and another that served as a terminal. Several vehicles had been abandoned here or there, and she felt Roman take the jet through what appeared to be an obstacle course of other private planes and cars.
When he brought the plane to a stop, she exhaled a breath of relief. Rhett squeezed her hand and winked before undoing both their buckles and gathering the shield from under the seat.
Roman entered the cabin with a map in his hands. “I got us as close as I could. Looks to me like you'll have about a four mile hike on foot unless you can get your hands on a car.”
“We're definitely taking transportation,” Rhett said in a no nonsense voice.
Evelyn agreed. Trekking that far over hilly landscape would just tire them out. They needed every ounce of strength to deal with the Fallen.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Rhett took the map from Roman. “Whitemarch Castle. Let's go.”
†
The bleak, black sky lightened as a gray daybreak broke over the land. Piled into a Jeep Cherokee found at the airport, Rhett drove them past awakening villages where people seemed as stricken about the worldly events as everywhere else. There was much less packing and fleeing than in the bigger cities; here the citizens clustered in groups outside main businesses or homes, wringing their hands, some weeping silently.
In the back seat, Minna and Alexandra sat on Dragar and Dracht's laps while Christian crouched in the space between the back seat and the hatch.
Evelyn held the map and Rhett's shield in her lap, the former folded into a neat square. Rhett didn't need it now, not when the compass in his armor pulled him in the right direction, but they'd brought it along just in case.
A quarter mile from the castle, Rhett parked the Jeep alongside the road under a broad branched tree. Behind them sat quaint little Whitemarch Village and ahead a winding path leading to the tower gate of the castle.
Daughters of Eve Collection (Books 1, 2 & 3) Page 55
