The air seems to vacuum out from around me and I can’t catch my next breath. This thing—this competition, this game, this horrific, horrific nightmare has been around since the beginning. We are simply a manifestation of what once was, living out the consequences of someone else’s sins, shouldering their burden while creating our own.
She starts in on an answer, but Marshall waves his hands over my ears once again and they’re right back to sounding like gobbly-gook.
“Get me out of here, Marshall.” I turn away from the two beautiful beings that I have so much love and pity for. “Demetri.” I sigh his name out like the curse it is.
Marshall wraps his arm around my waist as we head back between the overgrown cedars.
“And the point of that was?” I’m almost afraid to ask, but at the same time I think I already know.
“The point is, there are repercussions from their actions that have trickled down from generation to generation. You, too, can feel them. And you, too, can create them.”
“Funny,” I say, wrapping my arms tightly around my favorite Sector. “I just came to the same conclusion myself.” The world around us warps at dizzying speeds. “You’re not taking me back to that first day at the bowling alley, are you?” It comes out dejected as I slowly accept the fate of every rotten thing that has transpired this wicked night.
“I am a Sector who keeps his word, Skyla. Though it tarries, wait for it. If I commit to a cause, I see it through to the bitter end.”
I can’t help but think I’m a cause that Marshall is devoted to seeing through until the bitter end.
The world blinks to life around us, and soon enough we’re floating somewhere near the ceiling of the old bowling alley. Just the sight of that slightly ramshackle establishment has my heart warming as if I were looking in the eyes of a dear friend.
“Thank you.” I brush a kiss to Marshall’s cheek.
He points down and I spot Logan and Gage on their feet, Brielle and me striding in looking so very young, so alarmingly innocent. And there I am, my soul glowing from the inside out like a beacon as my gaze remains firmly on Logan’s.
I was smitten. Yes, I was.
Gage stands a step behind Logan, gazing upon me as if I had just stepped out of his dreams and into reality, and in a way I did. But my heart, all of my energy is pouring out to the fair-haired boy before me. I was already gone, head over heels before he ever said hello. It was that instant. And as much as I would like to believe it was nothing more than a celestial hammer to the head, I can see with my own eyes it was genuine. I know it in my heart as well.
“I can’t hear them,” I whisper to Marshall and he shakes his head, his heavy stare still sunk in their direction.
“There’s nothing new under the sun, Skyla. You know all the words. You’ve played them back in your mind like a song. Your affection is pinned to the correct person. There was a serpent in this garden, too.”
A burst of anguish rips through me. “Don’t say that. I love Gage.” It comes from me weak and sounds more like a question than a fact. “I should have loved him better. I should have given him my all, right from the start. I should never have made him wait so long to have me. There were so many moves, so many things I could have done to secure his loyalty, his entire being. But in the end, the serpent whispered to him, too, sold him on more than one piece of forbidden fruit, and the rest is now imprinted in the annals of Nephilim history for time immemorial.
“I can’t reverse this, can I, Marshall?”
“Not from this vantage point. Certainly not from this point in time.” He buries his heated mouth over the top of my head. “I’m sorry, Skyla.”
“Not from this vantage point—not from this point in time.” I pull back and look to Marshall’s beautiful crimson eyes. “Then I will fix it from another vantage point, from another point in time.”
Marshall sighs, another drawn-out exasperated proverbial toss of the hands. He holds me tight and floats us down to where the four of us stood all those years ago. My feet never touch the ground. Instead, he speeds me toward my old self as I shake hands with Logan for the very first time and I push into my old body, through it, into Logan, and through him as I absorb every last bit of ecstasy emitting from those former versions of ourselves.
If there was a word for how immaculately blessed it felt to have those yearnings, those early pricklings of desire burn through me, it couldn’t come close to the splendor imparted on me. This was the language of God pulsating through my veins, the glory of the triune Godhead alive and well in my being. And then, just like that, I stop abruptly, face to face with the dark-haired, blue-eyed angel that would cause so much carnage one day in my life.
Shall you pass through him and see what he’s made of as well, Ms. Messenger?Marshall tips his head back as he tosses out the offer, but my eyes and every last ounce of my soul cannot break this hypnotic trance Gage has on me.
No.I don’t hesitate with the answer. If I push through Gage Oliver’s body, it might answer a few questions, the very ones I posed to Marshall just a little while earlier, but here in his distant space and time, looking into those unknowably ocean deep eyes, I see that I am not nearly prepared to have the truth splayed at my feet.
A holy love pours from me to him, and if there is no truth, no reciprocation of what I feel vibrating inside of him, I couldn’t stand to know it. There comes a time in a person’s life when you would much rather hold onto a lie with a strangled grip than embrace the bitter truth and watch as the flames of honesty incinerate your heart. I step in front of Gage as a silent tear rolls down my cheek, but I don’t acknowledge it. Instead, that righteous rage percolates inside of me and I lift my hand and offer my open palm across his cheek, a blow that goes off like a nuclear detonation as the room around us pulsates and thunders, as time crumbles to dust at our feet and the world claps to darkness.
With a jolt, Marshall and I land back in the center of that raucous party at his estate, still going fifty whores strong at this late hour. The ragtime tempo speeds up a notch upon our arrival and I pan the vicinity to find women on the furniture and men doing what looks like a poor rendition ofRiverdancein front of the fire. Clothes hang precariously, hair is mussed, and lipstick is most decidedly smeared. Suffice it to say, a carnal good time is being had by all.
I turn slightly and do a double take as Melody Winters gives it up to some old coot in the corner. Her bare thigh is lifted over his hip as he thrusts heartily into her and that red rat’s nest she calls hair is rocking against the wall. Not only does the sight sicken me, but it reminds me of another sickening offense. For a moment they morph into Chloe and Gage. Chloe opens her hot pink mouth and moans so loud it drowns out every other sound in this room. She’s pushing him deeper with her claws spiked into his bare ass as Gage thrashes between her legs like an animal.
Marshall blocks my view for a moment. “It’s not them, Skyla,” he says it stern as if I got a problem wrong on a pop quiz. Marshall was my teacher back in high school. That’s where his earthly charade began, as Mr. Dudley. Mr. Studley Dudley who went on to bed half the girls in the junior and senior class. I guess he had some sexual making up to do, and in his defense there were more than enough willing partners of every age and stage of life. He’s hewn from the heavens, and both his facial appeal and that godly body let you know it. Those feel-good vibratronics didn’t exactly hurt the situation either. Let’s just say he’s been an orgasmic delight ever since he’s popped back onto the planet.
I crane my neck past him and Chloe gifts me the finger as she slowly morphs back into Melody.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I know what he’s doing and with whom.” My chest bucks, but I refuse to acknowledge the malfeasance. It should be me Gage is making love to. How dare he defy me in so many ways in such a short and damning amount of time. My rage rises to new levels and a tantalizing, yet most likely dangerous, idea flits through my mind.
