Apocalyptic Read online

  Uneasy being alone with him, I nodded toward the lust-drunk nightclub of people. “Let’s go find Willow. I don’t want to do anything without him.”

  With a tight nod Salem followed me through the throng, shouting to be heard over the music and voices. “I left her asleep after a vigorous round of lovemaking. It’s hard to say how much time I have before she awakes.”

  Vigorous round of lovemaking? Such an angelic way of saying he screwed her to the point of exhaustion. A demon with nothing to do but think of ways to sabotage Salem’s desire to help me wouldn’t need a whole lot of rest. I couldn’t help but be curious at the state of his appearance. Twin flame love could take a pretty violent turn, however.

  Driven by the sense of urgency Salem exuded, I picked out Willow’s energy and followed it. Right to a booth in the back corner where he’d cozied up with the tequila-drinking, pink-haired girl.

  I was the worst. I felt horrible for having to interrupt him yet again.

  Thankfully Salem slapped a heavy hand on Willow’s shoulder, busting in without hesitation. “Sorry, brother, but it’s now or never,” Salem said, wincing apologetically.

  With a few words to his lady friend who pouted in disappointment, Willow slid out of the booth and followed us. He was still talking to her? No action at all yet? It had been a while now since Gabriel and I had first left to go to Brogan’s shop, leaving Willow here. Was he trying to make a snack out of this girl or date her? He was so unlike the other men of this bloodline. I adored him so hard for being so pure of heart.

  I let Willow lead the way to my office. Falling back, I scanned the place for Gabriel. He felt close. Spying him in a small group near the bar, I glided close enough to catch his eye. With a tilt of my head I invited him to follow me. Then I pulled my phone out and called Shaz.

  “Something is going on with Salem,” I said in a rush, afraid of how little time we had. “He’s running scared of Lilah, and I’m not sure we’ll get another chance. You guys better get over here.”

  Trepidation filled me as I returned to the quieter back hall where the music was muffled and the occasional shriek or climactic cry rang out. What if Gabriel was right? What if I couldn’t trust Salem? If anything went wrong, if the balance was severed completely…

  I couldn’t even entertain the horror it brought to mind.

  Maybe we shouldn’t do this. Maybe we shouldn’t mess with the balance at all. But would we ever get another chance to fix us?

  On my way by the room Jenner occupied with what sounded like multiple women, I rapped on the door a few times. “Heads up, Jenner. Arys is on his way and shit might get messy.”

  I didn’t wait for a response. He’d heard me. In my office Willow leaned on my desk, watching the restless angel flare and resettle his wings repeatedly. The angel had anxiety. This did not instill confidence.

  Watching him pace around, unable to stand or sit still, made me ill. Salem continuously glanced down the hallway through the open office door. His impatience rubbed my nerves raw.

  Within ten minutes a cool storm swelled inside me, and I turned to find Shaz and Arys striding down the hall. I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of emotion that took me. Desire, anger, love, and sorrow. But the greatest of these was love.

  It launched me down the hall and into Arys’s arms before I could even consider holding myself back. It wasn’t possible. We’d been forced apart, but we were always drawn back together. Every time stronger and more deeply entwined than the last. Making each separation hurt that much more.

  Arys enclosed me tight in his embrace. I wrapped my legs around his waist, my arms around his neck, and kissed him. Pouring out the fear and desperation in the only way I could. It echoed in Arys, in the way he claimed my mouth in a bruising assault on my lips.

  For a brief moment of time, we were whole again.

  So easily we lost ourselves in each other. Shaz had to grab hold of each of us, breaking the spell. “Let’s try a little moderation on the touchy-feely stuff, shall we?” he teased. “We all know how fast that can go south.”

  “And how,” Arys murmured, flashing a flirtatious smile at our wolf.

  “You know what I meant.” Shaz kept a serious face, but when he looked at Arys, his pulse ticked up a notch. I wondered what they’d been up to while away from me. Together. I always wondered.

  Reluctantly Arys and I disentangled from one another. We joined the others in the office, and the pressure in my head rose. Too many powerhouses in one room.

  Arys only had to enter the room, and he knew. Leaning in to brush his lips over my ear, he murmured, “What possessed you to claim my progeny?”

  “Let’s call it a contingency plan,” I said, low, unable to explain further. “A strategic play.”

  Not that Arys opposed my claiming of Gabriel. He never had been. If he had it his way, he’d bind every powerful person we knew to us. He nodded, accepting my answer.

  I followed his gaze to where Gabriel sat on the couch, calmly observing the rest of us. In small, casual glances, he took everyone in. How much did he know about us from visions he’d had that we weren’t privy to?

  Feeling my stare, he met my eyes. I wanted to ask him if we should shut this entire thing down and send Salem away? Could he be trusted at all? Gabriel hadn’t had those answers. All he’d been able to tell me was that Salem would go dark. He didn’t know when or how, only that it would happen.

  That knowledge had burrowed itself into the marrow of my bones, becoming part of me in a way that felt like it might split me apart. I had to tell Salem what I knew, didn’t I?

  Or did I? Would it give him a fighting chance or encourage him to give in? Half the people in the room were all people I was dying to tell this to. I couldn’t. Not yet. Not with Salem here. I needed more time to think about this.

  Willow and Salem discussed the details of how to repair the rift. Salem talked a mile a minute, rambling fast, afraid. Knowing that Lilah might force her way into his head at any moment did lend a greater sense of urgency to the situation. However, I feared urgency would lead to error.

  Holding my gaze, Gabriel gave a slight shrug and settled back against the couch. Not much help but he didn’t seem alarmed. I’d like to say I trusted the angel. He was an angel after all. Joined to a demon though, which kind of disqualified him from implicit trust.

  I was taking a chance trusting Gabriel. Between two evils, choose the lesser. Gabriel was dark as sin, no doubt about that. He wasn’t a demon though and could never be one. That gave him the win.

  “She has to find the core, isolate the tear, and bind it back together.” Salem directed this at Willow who rubbed a hand over his faintly stubbled jaw.

  “That sounds way too simple,” Shaz remarked, a skeptical brow raised. He lingered close enough to keep an eye on both Arys and me.

  “It is,” Gabriel added, drawing Salem’s attention. “For one, isolating their power core will require an altered state experience. Second, there’s no way she can mend a break in an immortal power core without being immortal herself.”

  Leaning against the wall near the door, I tried not to let the packed room make me claustrophobic. “Altered state experience? How altered are we talking?”

  “Ideally, you’d reach a heightened mental state,” Willow supplied. “A third eye view if you will. It will enable you to see the intricate design of your power. The idea is that you’ll see the weak point and be able to mend it with immortal power. Salem’s power.”

  Channel Salem’s power through me and use it to repair a damaged twin flame core created by powers beyond my full comprehension? Right. Piece of cake.

  “Easy peasy,” I muttered, head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. There was a stain up there. From the Harley days. Disgusting. “Willow, do you think I can do it? More specifically, do you think I should do it?”

  His opinion mattered the most. He knew what I was up against, and he knew what I was capable of. “I do think you can do it, yes,” Willow
said, confidence in me shining through his voice. “My concern is Salem. My brother, do you think you can do it?”

  Everyone looked to the angel for a reaction. He’d never been anything but cool and collected in my presence. Even when he lost his temper on Falon, he’d been in control and unafraid.

  Salem squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full height. “I’m here because I want to help. Will I get another chance? I don’t know. Not anytime soon with the way Lilah’s been going on about it. If we don’t try this now, I can’t say for sure when I’ll be back.”

  Silently I sent out a plea to Falon. Come on, you motherfucker. Hear me. Feel me.

  The immortal power had to come from Salem. He was a twin flame. Still, I preferred to have Falon there. He understood immortal power in a personal way. I told myself it had nothing to do with the way he’d left after Bane’s appearance.

  I looked to Arys who stood next to me with arms crossed. He eyed Salem with the same suspicion I’d felt since Gabriel’s warning. Funny that he of all people was warning me about someone else being dangerous.

  “If we only have one shot,” Arys began, pausing to glance at Shaz. “Then we have to take it.”

  Our wolf didn’t seem convinced. He shook his platinum head, worry creasing his brow. “Is it worth the risk of having it all go horribly wrong? If you only have one shot, should it be under these circumstances?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered to nobody. If Gabriel was right and Salem would go dark, then this might be the last time I’d even see him as an angel. It might be our only chance.

  With a frustrated cry I shoved away from the wall and paced to the other side of the room, as far as I could get from the rest of them clustered in the middle. I didn’t feel like I had a choice. It was now or never. Try to save us like I’d promised Arys I would or keep watching us unravel.

  I whirled around to find them all watching me with varying degrees of expectation. “Ok, let’s do this.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Five minutes later I sat on the floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by six powerhouse men. A succubus dream come true to be sure. Too bad it wasn’t that kind of group setting. That would have been a lot less terrifying and a whole lot more interesting.

  Who was I kidding? Even I wasn’t succubus enough to take on the role as the center in a circle this big. Kudos to the ladies who happily did.

  The coffee table had been shoved against a wall. I sat in its place in front of the couch, Arys on my right and Salem on my left. Across from me sat Willow. Shaz and Gabriel hovered close enough to watch everything that went on.

  Jenner leaned against the doorframe, keeping his distance. He didn’t like this kind of magic. Admitting it gave him the creeps, he hung back. He’d ditched the ladies in his room to have our back here, so I could forgive his unease. I felt the same.

  Willow nodded to Salem. “Give her the sun star of protection before we do this. I’d do it if I could.”

  “The what now?” Curious but trusting, I sat there, cross legged on the floor, while Salem angled himself toward me and began to draw on my forehead with a finger.

  “It’s a symbol of angelic protection,” Willow explained. “It will protect your mind. Altered states of consciousness open one up to many dangers.”

  Salem’s finger glided over my skin, loops and swirls that made no sense to me. There was a faint tingle as the power of the mark came alive.

  “Ready?” Willow asked.

  My stomach plummeted in a sickening freefall. No, I was not ready. Unfortunately, I’d been forced to learn that some things I’d never be ready to face and that didn’t mean shit. I’d have to face it anyway. Why prolong the inevitable?

  “Yeah.” I grabbed Arys’s hand in a bone-crushing death grip. He’d been eyeing up my carotid since he got here. I had to do this for us. “Ready.”

  Arys didn’t reflect my apprehension. Calm next to me, he caught my jaw in his hand and tipped my face up to his. “I know you can do this.” He searched me, wanting to see that I believed him.

  I wanted to. I tried. “Arys, whatever happens, don’t forget how much I love you.”

  “That’s fucking bleak, Alexa” Jenner barked from the doorway. “This isn’t goodbye. Get on with it. You’re making me nervous.”

  But what if it is? My heart only had so many pieces left. I couldn’t stand to lose anymore.

  “Shut the hell up,” Shaz snapped, his short patience a clear sign of how he felt about all this.

  “Simmer down, boys.” I waved a hand to shut them both up. Then I nodded to Willow. I trusted him to oversee this entire process. Never would I have attempted anything without his guidance.

  The room fell quiet. Almost too quiet.

  I knew what I had to do. Find the rift, channel Salem’s power through me, and pour it into the rift, making it whole again. At least that was the plan.

  “It’s going to happen fast,” Willow said, reaching to give my arm a comforting squeeze. “Salem will use the sun star to pull you into an altered state of consciousness. Somewhat of an in between. Not quite out of body, you’ll still be here. Trust yourself.”

  I held tighter to Arys and closed my eyes. There was no calming the rise of nerves. A spark in my palm linked us together. It reassured me.

  When Salem touched the mark on my forehead again, he spoke a few words in his immortal language. And I went under. Over? Out? Whatever.

  The room fell away and me with it, falling backward. Shaz’s hands suddenly cradled my head, easing it gently to the floor. I felt him, smelled him, but it was all background sensation. My raw awareness had been awakened.

  I was very much still in my body. I could feel it there, heavy and numb. But I was also outside of it, viewing the entire room. Every man’s aura shone brightly, each a different color. I’d always been able to physically see some elements of power, but this was a whole other view.

  Shaz glowed with the brightest light. Being the only one present with a proper mortal heartbeat, his energy was a dizzying green, lively and full of life.

  A brilliant amber outlined Willow. It held me captive as every few seconds a streak of pure white light darted through his aura. Other than Salem, Arys and me, nobody else but Willow had more than one color to their aura.

  I wanted to ogle each of them in turn. Urgency shook me, reminding me that I didn’t have time for that. Focussing on Arys and me, I studied the bindings of blue and gold twisting around and through us. Standing back and viewing our power from the outside, the yin-yang arrangement became evident. What I noticed immediately and with alarm was how unbalanced we were.

  A proper yin-yang has that even split with a splash of light in the dark and vice versa. We may have started out that way, but right away I saw why we were such a mess now. The streaks of yellow light breaking through Arys’s dark blue were tiny, a small candle in the middle of pitch black night. Barely there. Whereas the splash of deep blue that stained my golden yellow had seeped well beyond the dark splash it should have been.

  More than half of my energy ran dark.

  There was no even balance in either of us or between us. It was so off. Arys was dangling on the edge of total darkness. I was now more dark than light. It was growing. Taking over.

  How did I fix this? Was it supposed to be obvious? Because it wasn’t.

  I knew the guys were speaking in low tones amongst themselves, but I couldn’t hone in on what they were saying.

  The twin flame rift, the growing abyss between us, it was darkness. Slowly eating away at us. Consuming. If it succeeded in taking us, it would unleash total mayhem.

  Through our joined hands the energy flowed freely, sparking every so often.

  A silver thread danced between us, bouncing around in response to our chaotic energy. The twin flame soul thread. Immortal and unbreakable. That’s what kept us from ever being able to walk away from each other. A true til death do us part.

  Could I even do this? It felt beyon
d my experience. Maybe we could find another way to hold off the darkness. To keep it from spreading further. Another keystone perhaps. Fixing the rift meant driving back the darkness.

  Frustrated with how little time I had to do something, I reached out with a hand that wasn’t physically there and touched our joined hands. It was easily one of the weirdest things I’d ever done.

  Concentrating on the flow of energy, I let it take me. I followed the current of light and dark, feeling the way it swung wildly between us, from one to the other. Erratic and unpredictable. A proper balance should feel smooth and fluid, the flow uninterrupted. The power that ran rampant through Arys and me felt hard and rough, like it had jagged edges. It was strong, a true force to be reckoned with. But it wasn’t what it should be.

  The darkness gripped Arys, feeding his illicit hunger. The light battled it back, meager as it was, refusing to go quiet or gentle. Within me the two sides warred, battling for dominance.

  Not knowing where to even begin, I panicked. Then I heard Willow’s kind voice repeating, “Trust yourself.”

  Making a conscious effort, I focused on my tie to Arys, drawing on the power we shared. I tapped as much as I could. If needed I’d reach beyond us to our vampires.

  My lungs inflated and my body vibrated with the sudden surge. I was both in and out of it, making precise focus a challenge. Trying not to get caught up in the physical sensations, I kept my mind’s eye fixed on the darkness. I’d have to force it to retreat. Having a keystone had kept it at bay. Without one, it seemed to be spreading fast.

  Tapped into Arys, I reached for Salem. His power came in like an explosion, both blinding and deafening. I struggled to catch hold of it, but once I did it responded to me. To my light. It recognized me as kindred. Yes! That’s what I needed.

  Studying the midnight-blue force that was our darkness, I concentrated on forcing it to retreat until there was nothing else in my mind. Then I pushed the cocktail of twin flame power into it. Channeling the power of others got easier every time I did it.