Crux (The Aurora Lockette Series) (14 page)

“Sit,” Abel told him, pointing to a chair in the loose circle. “We have much to discuss with Aurora.”

Dennis finally sat.

Sam had his eyes glued to Aurora, like a jungle cat watching his prey. He stared at her like he could see right through her, to the core of her. His hands were folded in front of his face, eyes following her every move. He was evaluating her, but I didn’t get the sense he meant it in an inappropriate or dangerous way.

Aurora tapped her fingertips on the armrest of her chair.
“We are in imminent danger. The whole world is.”

Dennis glanced at Abel and back to her.
“Well, tell us.”

Sam unfolded his arms, clapped his hands, and laughed. We all stared at him.
“What is he going on about?” I asked Carmen.

“
Sam?” Dennis said. “What’s gotten in to you? This is no laughing matter.”

“
I know, I know.” Sam pointed a long slender finger at Aurora. “This one, she is like me.”

“
Impossible!” Dennis shouted. His face was bright red, veins bulging out. “We don’t have time for this. She is a flyer. She is not like you.”

“
Oh, wow,” Carmen breathed.

“
Dennis, please calm down,” Abel said. His facial expression and demeanor remained unchanged. I had the sense that if a bomb went off outside, he would be calm and still like a meditating monk as the plaster and wood fell around him.

“
Don’t tell me to calm down,” Dennis said, but his voice had lowered back to a civilized level. “We don’t have bloody time for this. We have to know everything she knows so we can act.”

“
Hey, wait a second. What is he talking about? What is he?” Aurora asked. She turned to look at me. I was by her side in a second. I had a feeling that whatever news she was about to hear was going to rock her already tilted world, but I was going to be right there to help catch her.

“
I am a Gifted like you, but I am also a Spirit,” Sam said calmly, speaking only to Aurora.

“
Okay. Which means?”

“
It means, it means...” Sam trailed off. Then he disappeared.

AURORA

Holy crap! He’d just disappeared. One second
he was sitting in his chair, watching me with his strange dark eyes, the next second he was gone.

“
Bloody Hell!” Gavyn exclaimed from behind me.

I jumped out of my chair.
“What’s going on, Dennis?” I turned to the still serene Abel. “Is he invisible or something?”

Abel unfolded his hands.
“He is a Gifted, like all of us, but he is what we call Spirit. It is what it sounds like. He is both corporeal and non-corporeal. He can disappear and become non-corporeal, but still exist, or he may be corporal, and you can touch him like you would any other man. It is both exceedingly rare and extraordinarily powerful. We haven’t had one in hundreds of years until Sam came along.”

“
Whoa.”

A
chair scraped on the floor behind me. I turned and found Sam calmly sitting cross-legged in it. “Or,” he said, “I can also possess another body.”

Holy crap.

It clicked perfectly into place with what the Shyama captor had told me—that we were demons. I almost jumped up and down in place.

“
This makes sense to me.” I pointed to Sam. “He makes sense. It all comes together because what they said is true.”

“
Please explain your meaning,” Abel said. He’d refolded his hands in front of his face, fingers pointed up and touching the bottom of his chin. I swear in another life he’d probably been a monk.

I moved so I wasn’t standing directly in front of Sam. I was pulled by nature to Gavyn, like the very forces of gravity compelled us together. Once I was next to him, I felt whole again.
“The captors told me we are all demons, two sides of the same coin. We are both descended from Asag.”

Abel pointed his fingers at me.
“Asag, the Mesopotamian rock demon god? That is what you speak of?”

“
Yes.” Gavyn slid his fingers into mine and it grounded me. “His first wife, Uras, was Goddess of the Earth. She is who we come from. His second wife, Ki, was the Goddess of the Underworld, that is who the Shyama come from, but we are both demons.”

“
We are demons?” Konstantin said. “But we aren’t evil, and they are. We have different forms, different purposes. How can we be the same?”

Abel stood. He seemed even taller now, probably because he towered over every other person in the room. He paced
as he spoke, “The word demon in ancient Greek is Daimon. Daimon was a term for spiritual beings and had no negative connotations. The word did not receive a malevolent meaning until a translation of the Christian Bible from Hebrew to Greek.”

“
You sound like a history professor,” Gavyn said.

Abel stopped his pacing and a glimmer of smile appeared on his face.
“That is probably because I am an insatiable student of history, and I’ve been alive a very long time.” He started pacing again, this time to one of the tall, narrow windows. He focused his attention out one, but continued, “Asag has come up before in our research. It surprises me little that it is indeed the true nature of what we are. We’ve never come this close to knowing the truth.”

Abel rotated to face me.
“What else do you know?”

I examined his face. Intelligent eyes stared right back at me.
“They are going to exterminate the entire earth. They called it the cleansing to get rid of all humans. Then Asag will rise from the underworld.”

“
What?” Dennis roared from behind me.

The room
went still, like someone hit pause, as I waited for Abel’s response. Everyone turned to this man in front of me.

He rubbed his chin, still holding my gaze. I could feel him evaluating me, probing me with his mind. He was like Carmen, except much more powerful. Finally, he spoke
, “Then we don’t have much time.” He addressed Dennis and Sam, “Code White.”

Judging by the reactions in the room, this was big. Like, epically big. I’d been with the organization for a year, and I had no idea what the hell a Code White was.

“Are you sure, sir?” Konstantin asked. Carmen was next to him, looking like she just woke up from a nightmare.

Dennis pulled
out a laptop and a cell phone, fingers poised over the keyboard. “We don’t even know the full assessment of the threat level.”

“
We don’t have time to do anything else. We will gather intelligence as quickly as we can. We have no choice,” Abel replied without hesitation. “Now that they know we know, they will act fast.”

“
What is Code White?” I asked Abel. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“
It is an emergency worldwide activation of all forces to prevent an extinction event.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. The world tilted a little. Energy shifted behind me as everyone absorbed the news.

His gaze turned back out the window. “You have your army, Aurora. Now you will lead them to victory.”

“
What?” I wanted to jump out of my skin. I was ready to fight. In truth, I wanted to torch every single Shyama walking the earth, but lead an army?

Abel returned to his chair, hands folded again.
“Learn how to use your spirit. The boy is right.”

I stayed by the window. The mansion was built in a hill of sorts on the very edge of the housing development. A stone wall ringed the house, but beyond that, open brown desert stretched as far as I could see.

Gavyn came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. I leaned back into him, letting his warmth seep into my bones.

“
Did he just say ‘your army’?” Gavyn asked.

“
Yes,” I whispered.

“
Oh,” he said hoarsely. I couldn’t see his face, but my guilt-ridden mind colored in what he was feeling: fear, concern, anxiety. He held me closer and some of the tension left my body. We stood together, gazing out over the emptiness in front of us. “You better get started.” He squeezed my waist again.

“
Thank you,” I said.

“
For what?”

“
For loving me, no matter what. Even this.” I kissed him softly on those full, beautiful lips.

“
Especially this,” he said when our lips parted.

We turned back to the room. Dennis, Konstantin and Carmen were on
their phones, no doubt making calls around the world to bring in an army.

My thoughts whirled together in
a frenzied loop inside my head.
Calm down, Aurora. Calm down. What do we need to do?

I returned to Abel, who was spreading out
a map of the Vegas desert on a long table in the corner of the room.

“
How many do you think we can get?” I asked.

“
A couple thousand in a few days, double that in a week.” He smoothed out the map and used heavy books from a nearby bookcase to hold down the corners.

“
Where are we going to put them?”

“
A few hundred here. The rest are going to have to stay in safe houses, maybe tents out in the desert. I own a fifty acre ranch here,” he pointed at a spot on the map.

“
Really?”

“
I’m a native to Las Vegas. Been here for a hundred years.”

I glanced sideways at him, but didn’t comment. We age very slowly, so this didn’t surprise me as much as it should
have.

“
That’s close to the rock the Shyama showed me, where Asag was.” I pointed it out to him.

“
Perfect.” He leaned over to mark a spot on the map. “I’ll get my people on this.”

“
Good.”

I lingered beside him, aware of the building flurry of activity in the room behind me.
“What’s next?” I asked.

He tapped
on the map. “I will get your army here. You need to tell us where to send them, precisely.” He looked at me, giving me the full focus of his stare.

Oh,
damn
. “Look, I’m fairly new to this, and I’m not sure that I’m as cool as you think I am. I…I just don’t know.”

He smiled.
“You know best since they captured you. Plus, I’ve never seen Spirit and flight. I suggest you learn how to control the Spirit.” We both looked at Sam, who was still sitting impassively in the chair. Gavyn stood near him, watching me watching him.

With that, Abel tapped the map again then joined the flurry of
action. The room had swelled with activity. Men were dragging tables into lines and setting up laptops, phone lines, and maps—a central command room, I realized.

Code White was
in full swing.

I found Gavyn, hands shoved deep in his pockets, concern etched across his face. I pushed myself against him
, and he wrapped his arms around me.

“
Wow,” he whispered. “This is serious, isn’t it?”

“
Very. They’re going to wipe out humanity if we don’t stop them.”

“
We’ll stop them,” Gavyn said confidently. We swayed back and forth a few more seconds. I let the bliss wrap around me, even if it was just for a fleeting moment.

“
All right.” I let him go. It was time to work.

GAVYN

She was against my body, just for a second. I still couldn’t believe she was back with me, but now we had to face this. Really, she had to face it.

When she moved away, her face was set in firm lines, eyes blazing. My warrior was definitely back and here to stay.

She put her hands on her hips and scanned the room.
“How many people can we have in twenty-four hours?”

Konstantin held up his finger to indicate he was on the phone. When he put it down, he answered her
, “We’ve got about eight hundred fighters confirmed to arrive in ten hours. Abel just figured out a way to set up barracks on his land. Squadron leaders are all coming here.”

“
Got it,” she said.

She scanned the room again.
“I’ll be back in three hours,” she announced. Several people nodded to let her know they heard her.

“
Did that sound in-charge-ish?” she asked me.

“
Yes, and I like it.”

Her face slipped out of warrior mode and she
turned soft again. “Don’t flirt with me, Gavyn. Once we are alone, I will be doing very bad things to you,” she whispered.

My pants grew tight. Damn it.
“Naughty girl.” I excused myself to the corner of the room, pretending to look out the window while I calmed myself down, but I watched her. I always watched her. It didn’t seem right to think like this, but no matter what was happening in the world, we were still very much in love and yearned for physical contact. Knowing that she was thinking that way too excited me. I tried to focus on the here and now, instead of the tangle of limbs and softness I was picturing in my head.