Crown of Doom and Light Page 3

  Prophet looked over at Runyon, enthusiastically cheering on his girlfriend, whistling and clapping.

  “Yeah, baby! Fuck yeah!”

  Molly picked up her air guitar and played it better than Etheridge ever could, violently shaking fiery red hair so hard that Prophet feared she might snap a vertebra if she wasn’t careful.

  Runyon whistled.

  The two women stood back-to-back, legs spread, and played out this rock fantasy in perfect unison. If Prophet didn’t know better, he’d almost believe that they’d been rehearsing this performance.

  Eden lip synced every word, every verse, flawlessly. She slid down the length of Molly’s body, lay on her back on the floor and pushed her body between Molly’s legs, then turned over, got up on all fours, and crawled like a cat over to Prophet.

  She planted her hands on his thighs, pulled herself up, draped one long leg over him and then the other until she was straddling him, then pumped her hips seductively against his to the rhythm of the music.

  He stared into her eyes, relieved that they were still brown, and grinned. This was all Eden. The whole damn performance was just her.

  “You’re silly,” he said, still smiling.

  She batted those pretty eyes of hers, and pursed her lips. “Yeah, but did you like it?”

  There was something sweet in her question, something shy and even vulnerable. It was uncharacteristic, as of late. It was unexpected. But it was certainly appreciated.

  “Every lovely moment,” he said, pulling her closer to him.

  And then he kissed her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Isis and a dozen of other ancients trailed into the little makeshift bar just in time to see Eden and Molly wrapping up their little dance number. Prophet and Runyon looked like two starry-eyed human teenage boys fawning over the girls sitting in their laps. Their ancient dignity was nowhere to be found, and Isis was embarrassed for them.

  “Welcome, fellow freedom fighters,” Molly said, laughing and raising her glass to the group of Ancients as they entered the bar. “We’re taking requests if you’ve got any,” she winked at Eden. “Just don’t expect us to get naked. We’re not drunk enough for that yet.”

  Isis and the others returned cordial nods to the foursome, but that was as far as it went.

  “Humanity,” Ahmand, the Fey fighter, huffed, shaking his head and waiving his delicate hand over the table conjuring a crystal champagne glass filled with a golden liquid only his kind could stomach. “How long have humans associated that word with nobility? Touting it as if it were the Holy Grail of being.” He rolled his eyes in dramatic fashion. “It’s an embarrassment. Animals behave better than humans.”

  As with most Fey, it was hard to discern what gender Ahmand was. He had insisted that he was male, so they took him at his word. He was breathtakingly beautiful, elegant, and animated. He dressed in the finest garments of satin, silk, lace, and leather, even when fighting. His hypnotic, electric blue eyes were stunning to behold, and his silky, blond hair cascaded in waves past his shoulders.

  Most Fey preferred living inside sanctuary walls and used magic to glamorize themselves, fooling humans into over-the-top celebrity worship. Ahmand was the exception. “The pampered life has made us all soft,” he’d once said to Isis with a snarl. “We’ve forgotten our Fey fury, and most curl up meowing like kittens when faced with confrontation,” he said, dragging the back of his hand across pouty red lips. “I’m as much a fighter as I am a lover,” he winked at her.

  Isis’s stomach turned a little back when he’d first said those things to her, and even now, when he insisted on flirting.

  ENIG, a Phantom, was not a fan of Fey. His Earth name was ENIG, an acronym for his full name, which no one, not even most Ancients, could pronounce.

  “But it’s the humans who rule this world. Not animals,“ ENIG said. “Blame it on that imposing thumb and a little thing called reason. Your disdain for them must be shallow if you’re willing to fight alongside them and to fight for them.”

  Ahmand rolled his eyes dismissively.

  “How many did you slay today, Ahmand?” Isis asked smirking, working hard to ignore the incessant and childish giggling coming from the two human girls dripping all over Prophet and Runyon like syrup.

  “A few hundred, I suppose,” he said smugly. “And you, beauty?”

  “Not nearly as many,” she replied. She was teasing, but his ego was too big to notice.

  At different times since the Ancients had become a part of this world, both Prophet and Runyon had once been Isis’s lovers. She and Prophet had been together the longest, coming together not long after the Fall of Theia. He’d made it clear that he could never love her, but somewhere in her mind, she’d learned to pretend that he could. After he found his human, his reborn Beloved, Isis had been quickly dismissed, as if all those thousands of years of companionship had meant nothing. Over time, she and Runyon had become intimate. But Isis never loved the Were. He had been a piece of convenient and ferocious ass and nothing more.

  The Phantom pined after her now. But Phantoms were useless as lovers. They lived between dimensions. Their bodies existed in one while their souls existed in another, casting them in a ghostly light. Even if he could get it up and get it in, she doubted seriously that she would even be able to feel it, and so making love to him, or even attempting to, was out of the question. He’d do nothing but leave her frustrated. He was a decent enough spy, though.

  “We fight against these grimy human gangs and their disgusting vamp cohorts, and for what?” ENIG said, dismally hunched over the table.

  “Let me guess,” Torok interjected. Torok was one of the few Berserkers who had survived Theia’s destruction. Most of them had been on the dark side of the planet when it exploded. “Now we’re going to cry in our soup about shitty humans and our very short shitty lives.”

  “Shitty is as shitty does, Torok,” Ahmand quipped.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Torok shot back.

  Ahmand turned his attention to Eden and the others. “Meaning rather than sitting around waiting for the inevitable end of the world, I say live life to the very fullest. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  “Said the pretty and magical Fey living in his pretty and magical house in his pretty magical delusion,” Isis shot back.

  Ahmand may have fought alongside them, but he always returned home to his highrise condo in the Manhattan City Sanctuary with its floor to ceiling windows, crystal chandeliers, and marble tile floors. All courtesy of Fey magic.

  “Jealous, much?” The Fey smirked.

  “No,” she said casually. “Mine are real.”

  She wasn’t referring to magic or houses or delusions.

  “Breasts or balls,” the Fey retorted. “You want me and you know it. One of these days, Isis,” he casually leaned back and blew her a kiss with those girly lips of his.

  “Ahmand,” ENIG said with warning, feeling the need to step in and protect a being perfectly capable of protecting herself.

  “Both,” she responded, leaning toward him.

  “Does any of this matter if our little Redeemer decides to spontaneously combust all of a sudden?” ENIG asked in a low tone, motioning his head toward Eden.

  “No,” Torok grunted. “It does not.”

  The Berserker literally had no neck. His head blended directly into his massive shoulders. Before the Demon came and shit down the throat of this world, Torok had been a champion wrestler under the moniker of “Berserker”. What else?

  “The bitch is going to kill us all, so what’s the point in thinking about it?” Torok continued, not trying to keep his voice down at all.

  He was right. Eden was a nuclear explosion just waiting to happen. Somehow, she’d managed to do what Mkombozi had failed to do. Eden had bonded with the Omen and lived to not only kill Sakarabru, as prophesied, but to rid the world of his army, the Brood, made up of humans that he’d turned into a new kind of monster. Twice she’d been the hero and s
aved the day. But she was never meant to live. Khale should have killed her the same way she’d killed Mkombozi, but she’d failed. Eden had turned the tables and killed her instead. Now the only being capable of putting the savior of the world out of her misery, and theirs, was gone, and there was no one left to stop her, to stop her Omen from doing to this world what Mkombozi had done to Theia.

  Most of the Ancients had scattered after Khale’s death. They’d run off to wherever it was that they called home to wait to die. Some, like Isis and ENIG and the others, continued to fight in the Burbs while the larger cities began the process of rebuilding. They fought to save humans who didn’t have the protection of armed forces to protect them, and who were under the constant threat of the trafficking gangs and vamps who had been growing fat on human blood for millennia.

  Isis fought because it was all she knew how to do. It was a way to kill time while she waited for the inevitable. She’d lost one world and those she’d loved in The Fall bought on by the first Redeemer. Now, she was about to lose another, and to sit around idle, thinking about it all the time, was maddening.

  Without realizing it, Isis had been staring at the two of them. Eden couldn’t keep her hands off the Guardian. Or her lips. Isis understood how difficult it was to be so close to Prophet and to not touch him. She wasn’t jealous. She’d told herself that and she’d told him. And it was the truth. If fate had found him deserving of another chance to be with the one he had sworn his oath to, whom he had promised his heart to more than four thousand years ago, then so be it. If he’d found her in a skinny human girl, then who was she to question? Whatever ache she felt at the loss of him she held deep inside herself, so deep that most of the time she forgot that it was there. Until moments like this, when she saw the two of them together, when they looked happy, as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Not even that it would end—and end because of her.

  “Isis?” ENIG asked, leaning close to her. “Are you all right?” He raised his hand, brushing away a strand of hair. His thumb felt like a warm mist.

  “It must’ve gotten something in my eye,” she said solemnly, pulling away from his touch.

  He nodded. “Yes. It must’ve.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Prophet was the center of everything, and Eden orbited around him like a planet. He was the stuff of superhero fantasies, with massive wings that he could summon at will; tall, nearly seven feet; lean and muscular, with locs that nearly touched the ground and silver eyes that looked like mirrors. His skin was the color of a new penny, his voice as deep as the ocean floor, and he had the courage to run over death like a freight train to get to Eden.

  He had saved her life too many times to count, and he’d saved his own just so that she wouldn’t have to live without him. Sure, she was the most powerful being in the universe and if he pissed her off bad enough, she could easily smite him—but he’d fought for and earned his role as her alpha, which was not an easy task considering who and what she was. So yeah. She dug the hell out of him.

  Several hours after her stellar performance in that no-name pub in that no-name township, Eden and Prophet were back at their own sanctuary in Vermont. The beautiful haven had three levels, with rich, mahogany hard wood floors and high beamed ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows on nearly every wall, and a huge and beautiful deck overlooking a small portion of the six thousand acres it sat on. This was home now. It was the place he always brought her back to after all hell had broken loose and she was fighting for her sanity and her soul. This place was just for the two of them, and it was perfect.

  “Am I hurting you?” he murmured from behind her.

  It was a silly question, but one he always asked when they made love. Despite the fact that she was filled with elements that made her more powerful than any other entity in the world, her body still had some human limitations, which still made him kind of uneasy.

  Eden moaned. “Yes, Beloved,” she said, luxuriously, as he filled her with long, slow strokes from behind. She smiled and rolled her hips. “Oh, yes.”

  One of Prophet’s hands rested on her lower back, while the other held her hip as he maneuvered her where he wanted her to go. She trusted him. It was a difficult thing for an alpha like her to do, but she had conceded to him because he had earned her respect. Actually, he’d taken her respect, snatched it right out from under her until common sense kicked in and made her realize that it was only right that he should be her alpha. He was older, like by more than four thousand years. So, he had some experience under his belt. And he wasn’t under the influence of a demon’s essence, which made him the voice of reason.

  Eden lay on her stomach across the bed, her knees underneath her and her arms spread out in front of her. Sometimes they made love and it was passionate and romantic and sensual and sexy. Other times, they did this. It soothed her, calmed her spirit. Eden was always so riled up after fighting that sleep was nearly an impossible accomplishment. Battle invigorated her. It fed the warrior in her that had no other purpose except to kill and destroy. More and more, fighting was becoming an addiction for Eden, and the only way that she could be brought down from the high was for him to do her. It was either that or Eden would have to be allowed to break something, which could end up being a mountain or a skyscraper, so this really wasn’t a bad alternative.

  Eden licked her lips at the lovely sensation of him. Prophet bent over her back, tenderly kissed her neck and shoulders, and whispered. “I need my release, Beloved.”

  Eden arched her back even more, and pushed toward him as far back as she could. “Yes,” she murmured.

  She was high on him, brought back from the brink of destruction to the generous place of gratitude, peace, and giving. Eden wanted him to have all of her. Prophet deepened his strokes. His pace quickened, his fingers dug into her hips, and that low rumble in the back of his throat began to erupt from him. It didn’t happen all the time, but it was happening now.

  Eden’s orgasm began to rise to the surface too. He grabbed a handful of her locs and pulled her head back.

  “Shit,” he muttered over and over again.

  Now it hurt. It ached so much, but she relished it. Eden salivated. “That’s it. That’s it,” she said, more to herself than to him.

  He growled like an animal at his release. Eden cried out at hers. Prophet lowered his long frame on top of her and grunted out what was left of his orgasm as Eden fought to catch her breath. The room was spinning. Every ounce of rage and adrenaline had dissipated. Her body melted under the weight of his. Prophet’s breath washed over her cheek, and nothing mattered except for the two of them. This was when life was at its most perfect. This was one of those rare moments when Eden was actually happy.

  The two of them lay in bed facing each other. Moments alone like this were everything because they were fleeting. Eden’s image was reflected back at her in Prophet’s mesmerizing silver eyes.

  She traced the outline of his lips with the tips of her fingers.

  “That tickles,” he told her.

  She smiled. “Quit your whining and take it like a Guardian.”

  “Kiss me.”

  Eden did as she was told and kissed him slowly, savoring his taste, his tongue.

  Prophet smiled, and let his eyes close. “Now go to sleep, Beloved.”

  The last thing Eden wanted to do was sleep. For her there was no rest in sleep, only voices, only a demon’s nightmares. And sleep stole time away from her Guardian.

  Eden waited until she knew that he was asleep, crept out of bed without waking him, and went downstairs to the deck on the back of the house where she liked to meditate.

  She stared up at the overcast sky, then sat on her mat, crossed her legs and closed her eyes. Meditation had always been her sanctuary, her church. It was the place she turned to for answers, insight, and peace. Eden breathed deeply, relaxed into her seat, and concentrated on her internal self. In her mind’s eye she could see herself, sitting exactly as she was sitting on the deck. The s
pace around her was dark, but a small fire burned in front of her.

  Eden may have looked as if she was alone, but she knew that she wasn’t. Soon, the light from the fire began to expand, revealing more of that space, revealing the three of them, three versions of herself, standing in a semi-circle behind her. They were closer now than they had been before, gradually encroaching upon her, patient, consistent in their approach.

  The first time she’d seen them in her meditation, they’d scared her, but not anymore. They’d been careful to make her comfortable with their presence. They took great care not to frighten her, and even to provide reassurance to her.

  Young one, they said in unison.

  She waited for them to say more, but they didn’t.

  It almost felt as if they were there to help her, watching over her, guiding her to the inevitable. She was tired. So tired.

  “Eden.”

  It was Prophet’s voice.

  “Eden, baby.”

  Eden felt his hand on her cheek, and opened her eyes in time to see lightning flashing in the sky.

  “Stop it,” he murmured, gently.

  For a moment, she didn’t know what he meant by that.

  “Just stop.” He kissed her.

  His kiss brought her back into this space, away from them. The lightning stopped.

  “Those pesky Omen again,” she murmured, forcing sarcasm into a statement that didn’t warrant it. It was her attempt to trick him into believing that her conjuring a little lightning wasn’t as big a deal as it really was. She wrapped her arms around him and he picked her up, carrying her inside the house and back to bed.

  He was her alpha, a point always at the forefront of her mind. Eden kept it there. The Omen continually searched him for weakness. Prophet had been injured by the Demon before Eden had destroyed him. The wound should’ve killed him, but it didn’t. Corvus, the oldest of the Guardians, whose mate had died in the Fall of Theia, had taken advantage of Prophet’s injury and had tried to kill him too, out of hatred for what Mkombozi had done to Theia. All of the Guardians hated Prophet, but none more than Corvus. Khale had talked the older Guardian into killing Prophet and, in a sense, killing Eden’s reason for living. It backfired. Eden was still here, and even then, when Corvus had all but snatched the life out of Prophet, her Beloved had fought his way back from death for her sake. So, yes. He was everything.