Chosen (22 page)

“I know. I haven’t seen her or Cayne! Mer, where is Cayne?”

“Julia, the last time I saw him, an Authority was flying off with him. I’m so sorry.”

Julia couldn’t even feel the impact of Mer’s words. She just went numb.

“Where is Drew?”

“He’s up here, by the gate.”

They fell in with a line of regulars fleeing the resort via its massive gates. All Julia could think about was Cayne. His face, his hands, his eyes, his lips, his jokes. She wanted to scream, but she somehow held it in.

“This is it,” Meredith said, as they crested the hill and came up on a brick guard post. “This is where I left Drew.”

They rounded a small, brick building, and there was Nathan.

*

“Oh no, no, no. I’m not healing him.” Julia didn’t know what had come over her, and she didn’t care. She raised her hand, seriously considering blasting Nathan, who was clutching a bleeding leg and breathing hard. She came out of her stupor when Meredith stepped in front of her.

“Honey. Honey, no.”

“Meredith.” Nathan gritted his teeth. “You have to believe me. I really…didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know at all or didn’t think it would happen tonight? Either way, you lied to me!”

Nathan hung his head, and the guard post’s door opened. Drew hobbled out, pressing what looked like a woman’s sweater against his chest, and Julia immediately stepped over Nathan to heal him.

Somewhere in her head, she heard a buzzing sound, like maybe they should be leaving, but they couldn’t leave Drew and she wouldn’t leave without Cayne anyway. It didn’t take long to fix the slash in Drew’s chest, and he was asking her questions that she couldn’t really hear, questions about Cayne, and he was rubbing her back. Meredith was talking about a van, and somehow Dizzy was there, and Nathan was stabbing her, and Julia didn’t care. She didn’t care because Cayne was flying over her. There was an Authority on his tail, and one of his wings looked half melted—but he was flying.

She stumbled down the lawn, shooting blue fire out her fingertips and screeching Cayne’s name. It never occurred to her that she would run into anyone. It never even crossed her mind that she was putting herself in danger. She only wanted Cayne. So when Jacquie grabbed her by the arm, she felt a mighty bolt of shock.

“Julia,” she said, and Julia saw that her face was badly burned, “we need to talk.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“No. We don’t.” Julia had the option of blue fire, but she was so pissed off, she punched Jacquie in the face—and you can bet that bitch screamed in agony. She didn’t even stick around to watch the woman hit the ground. She ran, shooting blue fire from her fingers, looking up at the sky. Cayne was still there, and the Authority was not. Cayne’s wings were flapping normally, and it looked like he’d strapped an Authority’s bow to his chest—which, to her ridiculous delight, was bare.

Cayne swooped down and grabbed her.

“Omigod.” She turned into his arms, clinging to his still-bloody torso. “I thought you were dead! I thought you were dead!”

“I’m sorry. So sorry.” Despite the crazy flying he was doing, his arms around her were sheltering and gentle, and his lips were on her hair. “Are you okay? I was so worried.”

“I’m okay, but Carlin’s gone! We can’t find her!”

Cayne was silent for a second, and Julia opened her eyes to see they were flying over the street.

“NO, CAYNE! Turn around!”

“Let me guess,” he said. “We need to get the others.” But she could hear the smile in his voice.

“Drew and Meredith were by the gate… And Nathan.”

“I’m not helping him.”

“Fine by me.”

“Julia, I found our van. It’s just outside the rear gate. We’ll get it and pick up the others; I can’t fly with everyone.”

“We don’t have a key!”

“We’ll have to hope Edan left the keys.”

He took an angle and dove, speeding them to the van so fast Julia thought she might freeze. It was a good spot—all of the fighting was in the front of the resort—but the van was locked.

“Aww man!” Julia moaned.

“Stay here,” Cayne said. “Hide, over there—” he pointed to a copse of evergreens with low-hanging branches. “I’ll get Drew and Meredith and meet you here!”

“And Carlin!” Julia cried as he took off. “Please look for Carlin!”

He didn’t answer her, was already gone, but Julia had to believe he’d heard her. She ran to her cover, finally feeling the cold as her adrenaline ebbed. She tried to draw herself into a ball as she listened to the sounds from the resort—explosions, screams—and prayed for Cayne to make it back.

In what seemed like no time at all he was, carrying a crying Meredith and a wide-eyed Drew.

When they landed, Drew staggered away, puffing. “Thanks and all, but next time I’ll walk.”

Meredith hugged Julia and wailed, “This is all my fault.”

Julia tried to shush her as Cayne said, “We need to move now. I think it would be better if we split up.”

“What!” Julia cried. “No way!”

“We could always take the van.”

Julia whirled to find Edan walking out from the woods and smiling tentatively.

“What are you doing here!” Cayne demanded.

He grinned sheepishly. “When the fighting started, I get out as fast as I could. The front gate was blocked, but, same as you, I found this one.”

“Why didn’t you leave?”

Edan shrugged. “I was waiting for you guys.”

Cayne held out his hand. “Give me the key.”

Edan fished it out of his pocket. “But I get to come too, right?”

Cayne snatched it out of the air and handed it to Julia. “Get in.”

Julia got in the driver’s seat and cranked the van, watching through the window as Cayne and Edan talked and Drew and Meredith huddled near each other. Cayne looked once in Julia’s direction before plucking the string off the bow and tying it around Edan’s wrists. He opened the slider door for Drew and Meredith, then pushed Edan into the van and told Julia to drive.

“He says he knows how to get us to the gate,” was the only explanation he gave.

Drew grabbed the GPS, asking Edan for the address. But the guy was leaning into the back of the car.

“What the hell are you doing?” Cayne snapped.

“Trying to wake up Carlin.”

“CARLIN’S IN HERE?!”

“Yeah, I found her in the hall when the attack started, already passed out.”

And that was the biggest mystery of the night. Meredith hadn’t seen Carlin since she went searching for a Diet Coke during WoW. And Carlin had no memory of anything after that.

*

Several hours later, they stopped at a little mountainside café that served milkshakes,  of all things. Edan had promised Carlin she would like them. He said he’d been to heaven’s gates one time before, many years ago, as part of his duties as an on-again, off-again ‘messenger’ to heaven, and he promised them all that they were almost to the mountain’s peak, a supernatural post where, with the right knowledge and experience, one could travel to a different celestial plane.

“I worked for The Three, but I hate those old bastards.”

Which was a sharp contrast to how he seemed to feel for Carlin. Since Edan had fished her out of the backseat, sleepy and totally unaware of everything that had happened, he hadn’t left her side. He then convinced Cayne to loosen his binds by selling him on the usefulness of an Authority bow and arrow; to have a working one, you needed the string.

The guy had even apologized for not being able to heal Julia—and for disappearing. Reluctantly, he admitted that he had a history with a few of the Authorities that had been at the resort.

“I didn’t want to get my ass kicked, so I pretended I had other things to do.”

“So you
are
an angel,” Carlin said.

Edan shook his head, but seemed so sore about the subject, so no one pressed—not even Cayne.

Julia planned to talk to Cayne about him once she got to heaven’s gates. She liked Edan, but she’d finally gotten the point: This
was
a war, and if she wanted a life—a real one; her own happy, adult life with Cayne—she couldn’t afford to lose it. If Edan had a connection to The Three, even an inactive one, they needed to seriously consider whether he was worth having in their group.

And what would happen to the group once she was free, Julia wondered as they sat inside a sunroom, sipping milk shakes and looking out over St. Moritz.

Meredith was saying it was over between Nathan and her. She’d already mentioned once that she would like to see her aunt and uncle soon. Everyone knew Carlin wanted to see her family in Spain. And Drew didn’t strike Julia as the kind of guy who needed any handholding. She could see him striking off on his own, backpacking across Europe.

Tears filled her eyes, thinking that it might almost be over—their little group. And then she really got teary, because in a way, that would be wonderful. They would all be free… If they wanted, they could try to fall off the grid and live normal lives.

Still, even with the leash gone, The Three would probably always think of her as The One. What would that mean for her? She wondered if anyone at heaven’s gate could give her advice.

Carlin, who’d polished off a large chocolate shake, slapped Drew’s hand. “Well? Anybody else want to get on the move?”

Drew made a face and playfully slapped her back. “If I can get this vanilla heaven in a to-go cup.”

*

The peak of the mountain was everything Julia had expected. The road from the café to the top had been winding, littered with boulders, and slick with ice. Despite her upset-ness, Meredith had driven, and even the seasoned Los Angeles driver had white-knuckled the wheel.

Julia and Cayne sat in the two rearmost seats, looking out the back window, holding hands and talking quietly about the attack at the resort. She admitted, with stubborn reluctance, that she would never have expected it. Ever.

“I felt so comfortable there. Jacquie was so nice to me.” Cayne stroked her hand and nodded, and Julia dropped her face into her other hand. “I can’t believe how crazy things are now. I mean, yeah, I might be able to just…withdraw or whatever. When the leash is gone, maybe we can just run off, but…I dunno… I feel like some part of me is still there. We were just hanging out in that room and then…bam. And Nathan,” she said, very quietly. “He told Mer he didn’t expect the attack to happen when it did, and I half believe him. But he obviously knew it was coming.” She sighed. “I hate conflict. And the stupidest thing is I feel bad about what happened to the resort. Like it was my fault.”

“That’s where I have to interrupt,” Cayne told her quietly. “None of this is your fault. All of this is Methuselah’s fault. It’s that simple.”

Julia nodded. She got a dizzying glance over the railing that ran along their tiny road and averted her eyes down to her feet, still miraculously clad in her old pink All-Stars.

They were driving through clouds now, and she knew they must be getting close to the spot.

“Cayne,” she said.

“Julia.” He gave her a beautiful smile, those green eyes crinkling.

“If they really can remove the leash, what then? Do you think I’ll be able to live free of The Three?”

It was a long time before he answered. His hand was warm around hers. Snow had started falling, which was making Julia even dizzier, but somehow she didn’t care. She was riding in a warm car with friends, and Cayne was holding her hand. They’d all made it through the fight.

“I think we can try.” He looked at her. “I want to.”

Julia beamed. “I want to, too.”

And it was just like they were in a movie, because at that moment, Mer said, “This is it.” And their tiny, rocky road had ended, right at the base of a magnificent chimney-like rock, snow-caked and mighty, wreathed in clouds.

“You know,” Edan said, with a low chuckle, “I used to hear that if you look up in the clouds from a mountain like this, you might see angel’s wings. Sure as hell hope that isn’t true.”

Everyone glanced out their windows, and then Drew opened the sliding door. “Well, let’s get on with it.”

As the others climbed out, Cayne gave Julia a soft kiss on her cheek. “You ready?”

She nodded. “As much as I will be.”

The wind whipping around the rock was bitterly cold, slicing through the bright red jacket Carlin had bought her at a coat store they’d passed along the way. It tossed Julia’s long, brown hair around her face, even whipping it into Cayne’s.

When everyone was standing there, shivering like a bunch of wet puppies, Edan strode forward and pointed at the rock formation. “There’s a trail here. Snow doesn’t stick to it. Do you see it?” He pointed, and starting at the base of the rock, Julia could see a rocky little trail with no snow.

“And we do what?” Meredith said. “Just go up there and…”

“We climb as far as we can, and when we get there, we join hands. The energy is conducted from the first in line, and it can be painful, so the guys should go first, with Julia at the bottom.”

“Hey, I’m not a weakling,” she protested.

“You’re not exactly 100 percent,” Edan pointed out.

“Yeah…” It was true.

“Well, let’s do it,” Carlin said, smiling at Julia. “I’ll hold your hand.” She winked.

Edan went first, and Cayne followed. Then Drew, Meredith, Carlin, and Julia. They climbed for what felt like an hour, and Julia’s stomach twisted with nerves. Her toes screamed in protest of the cold, and she longed to be near Cayne. Finally, when Julia felt sure she was going to freeze to death, Edan announced that the trail had ended.

“So we hold hands now?” Carlin asked.

“Yes. That’s how energy is bound, and we need to bind our energy to go to another realm as a group.”

Carlin clutched Julia’s hand, and Julia glanced up to the top of the line. Cayne gave her a smile.

“I’m sorry for this,” Edan said. “At least a little.”

Then there was a blinding light and a roar from Cayne, and Drew said, “What the fuck?!”

For a few long seconds, Julia thought it was a mistake. A glitch in the spell. That Cayne and Edan would be right back…or maybe the rest of them would disappear, too. And then Drew said, “Right before that, Cayne… He. Well, he struggled. And Edan jerked Cayne toward him.” Then, “Holy shit! That’s it. My vision!”