Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 7.5) (15 page)

“My dad is gonna crucify me if I take the region for Celestra. He’s under the impression I’m protecting you—not sabotaging the win for his team.”

Crap.

I push another breath into Gage.

“Do what’s right Ellis—win for Celestra. If by some miracle I become overseer of the factions, I swear I’ll make you my right-hand man. Think of all the authority you’ll have, and the
chicks
—celestial chicks no less.”

Good God, I’m bribing him with angel ass.

Ellis snaps up the weaponry and takes off down the field. A mine explodes in his path, knocking him back like a ragdoll. His shoulder blooms a dark shade of crimson as he lies motionless with his legs twisted beneath him.

“Shit,” I pant, before blowing another breath into Gage.

I can’t lose them all—I can’t lose any of them.

“Mother!” I scream until it sounds primal, altogether animal. “
Daddy
.” I cry for my father, the one I know would move heaven and earth to help me. But here, in the ethereal plane, he’s helpless. The only thing I have to cling to is the determined belief that Logan, Gage, and Ellis are going to somehow survive. All of my hope is pinned on Chloe getting us out of this mess by deferring yet another victory to the Counts. “I hope you’re happy,” I scream at the fuchsia-colored sky before blowing a quick breath into Gage. “You wanted me naked and everyone I love dead. You
know
I can’t leave Gage!” I puff another few breaths into him.

I’ve already given Ezrina everything she wants. No use in trying to procure her useless services. Demetri—would help. He’d do it for my mother and everything he wishes they could be. He’d do it for the war, to gain ground and push Celestra and the Sectors off their longtime pedestals. The rules of engagement merely state they can’t fight—they never said anything about rescue—about deceiving with a faulty disc.

I blow in several more breathes into Gage’s beautiful body. My fingers slip into his wound and glide in the slick of his precious blood.

But first there’s another name I’ll try—one that has never let me down. If he comes, I will forever remember his generosity and I’ll be sure to reward him richly.

I tip my head back and summons every ounce of strength left in me.

I call out for Marshall as if he were the savior himself.

Chapter 73

Saving Grace

The sky in the ethereal plane mutes to an oily shade of soot. Long javelins of rain spear down, forming instant pools in our footprints. This was no ordinary shower, nothing tame like the torrents you’d see on Paragon. This melted over us like lovers’ tears with powerful sorrow behind every charge. It seared my skin like candle wax with its long deliberate incisions.

I place my lips over the raven-haired boy beneath me and breathe for him until he sputters to life under the careful administration of my love.

A roar erupts from behind. I look back in time to see a tornado of fire. A pillar of licking tongues disguised in a pleasant orange light migrates in this direction.

It takes a moment for me to realize there’s a body lodged in the furnace—a face I love and adore—Marshall.

I run over and stop shy of his burning eminence.

“I can guide you and no more.” His voice sounds, hollow, stiff, like shouting into a fishbowl.

“They’re all injured.” I point back to Logan and Gage—Ellis, too.

“Rip this region open,” he thunders. “First, the belly of your enemy, then the illusion of the sky.” His lips curve with a devious smile.

“This is no time for riddles! Just tell me what to do.” I no sooner get the words out then notice the wall of Jericho erecting itself on the horizon. The dull glow of Counts at least a hundred strong—all of them so ripe for the picking I can hardly stand it.

I run back and arm myself with the crossbow and quiver. Logan sits next to Gage, wincing with his hand on his chest.

“You guys OK?” I scream into them as the rain glazes over their skin like an anointing.

Logan gives a weak thumbs-up, and Gage offers a brief nod, but it’s clear they’re both hurting.  I dash back to Marshall and perfect my aim at the barrage of flesh on the hilltop next to ours, untied as an army of ants. 

“Soak the soil with their blood,” Marshall orders.

A familiar face strides quick in my direction. Cooper Flanders.

“Skyla!” His teeth flash a brilliant white as he pants his way over. His golden hair bobs up and down as he jogs into me. A black apparatus sits stretched over his back, looks like a missile launcher. He nods over at the crowd in the distance and smiles as if we were going to take them down, side by side.

“Where’s your friend?” He usually pairs himself with some guy named Flynn.

“He’s feeling a little blue.” He pulls his cheek to the side. “Countenance.”

“He’s a Count?” I rack my brain until I reach the vague memory of knowing this. “Why does he fight for Celestra?”

“For me. For our friend, Laken.” He fires the cannon strapped to his chest at the mob sweeping over the field like locusts and half of them are leveled in a plume of soot.

“Laken?” I’d congratulate him on the slaughter of our enemy, but
I’ve got a brief interrogation I’d like to subject him to.

He studies me a moment. “Yes.”

“Her sister and mother are in the tunnels. I’m trying to free them, all of them.”

Cooper swallows hard. “Laken would thank you if she could.”

“Is she here?” If her friends are here, maybe she’s floating around the ethereal plane somewhere. I’d love to meet her. I swear there’s something familiar about her, outside of the fact I’ve seen her in Wesley’s morbid fantasies.

Cooper looks perplexed as if the answer were far more complicated than a simple yes or no. It’s as if I had opened an entire library of questions, but a blue swarm infiltrates the vicinity, and now there was only time for actions, instinct and survival.

The mob screams forward. An arrow slices by and grazes his ear, causing the side of his face to explode with a giant claw mark.

He plucks a bastardized dart gun out of his pocket and hands it to me.  

I fire in quick succession until the human wall starts to crumble. The opalescent mass disbands as quick as they came. I see Chloe and Holden in the distance as they aim their steely weapons in my direction.

A heated whisper grazes against my temple and sends a line of fire clear past my ear. I lift my hand to my head and glance at it as the rain washes fresh blood from my fingers.

I look up in time to see Chloe slapping Holden with a victory pat.

He freaking scalped me. Damn near killed me.

Cooper fires another shot with the hellish bomb blaster hoisted over his shoulder and the Counts blow back like dust. 

The dark belly of a pregnant cloud quakes overhead as if taunting me. Marshall said rip open the belly of the enemy, then the illusion of the sky…

I pluck an arrow from my quiver and fire a shot straight up into the nebulous reserve. Nothing changes, no crash of light, no thunderous boom to let me know the region is over, just my feet pressed into the ethereal plane as rain begins to bleed from the sky. It’s as if God himself is affronted by my constant stream of impoverished efforts.  

A shadow flies overhead—a bird with long dark wings, svelte as a sparrow. She unzips the sky with her talons—stretches her body along the stratosphere. A black worm comes in and swallows up all of the color, the light, until it spits us out onto the salted beaches of Paragon.

I take in the rush of crashing waves, the damp sand beneath my bare flesh as Gage lies over me naked and bleeding.

***

Here we are, back at the Cove as a wave washes over the two of us causing Gage to seize before toppling off to the side.

“You’re hurt,” I say, touching the dark hole just over his stomach.

He hands me my bikini and struggles to reach for his shorts. We throw on our clothes in haste.

“Let’s find Logan and Ellis and get you to the hospital,” I say.

We pull ourselves off the shoreline, fighting the current that labors to drag us out to sea.

Gage cups a handful of water and blasts it over his wound. The blood has ceased to flow, leaving behind a dark gelatinous hole.

“What hit you?” I ask as we maneuver our way through a thicket of palms just this side of the base camp for Logan’s party.

“I don’t know—shrapnel maybe,” he says, pointing over to Logan and Ellis huddled under a hemlock. It looks as if they’re strategizing—praying.

I bolt over to inspect the damage.

“Hey.” I rub my hand over Logan’s back and he takes a quick breath. “How are you guys feeling?”

“Like I just walked into a land mine.” Ellis gives a stern look. “Oh, that’s right. I did.”

“I’m fine.” Logan wraps an arm around me gives a heavy glance at Gage. “You?”

“I’ll live.” Gage and Logan exchange rigid stares filled with lethal implications. It’s clear that animosity left from the war has bled into real life or maybe it was the other way around to begin with.

Chloe comes up from behind, a sharpened pocketknife dangling from her fingers. She carves a neat line down the inside of her forearm, safe from any major veins and squeezes a thick seam of blood to the surface. She smears her efforts over Gage’s wound so quick it’s a blur to witness.

“You OK?” Her eyes widen as she takes him in, like she might be moved to get on her knees and worship at a moment’s notice—already she’s given a blood sacrifice.

“I’m more than fine.” He touches his fingers to his bloodied chest.

“You won’t bleed anymore. You’ll be healed in minutes.” She looks up at him solemn. “I took the region so you could get out. I did it for you, Gage.”

A thin rail of panic surges through me. Chloe plus Gage equals a faction victory for the enemy. I don’t like the math. Not only that, but my efforts at ripping the belly of the enemy open were for not. Marshall told me what to do and yet I couldn’t deliver. 

“You didn’t have to do it for me.” Gage cinches his jaw. “I don’t fight for the Counts, Chloe.”

“Maybe you should,” she says. “Isn’t being on the winning team what you’re all about?” Her eyes glitter like onyx stones. “You know we’re going to win, Gage. You told me so yourself.” She cocks a quick smile in my direction before melting back into the crowd.

Gage told Chloe the Counts would win—that they would win the fucking
war
and somehow he omitted that piece of information from our conversations?

“You said that?” I can hardly choke out the words. This is a fresh level of betrayal, one I wasn’t ready for nor ever would be.

His dimples blink on and off as he considers this. “She said they would win and I said it looked like they might.”

A part of me dies when I hear those words. If Gage—the one who professes to love me—doesn’t believe I’m capable of victory for my people, then I’m pretty much screwed. To top it all off, I’m not sure I would have said anything different.

“We just need a strategy.” Ellis goes over and sits by the fire and we join him.  His shoulder is scratched up, but from here it looks like nothing more than a topical abrasion. “What’s your goal?”

“I don’t know.” I give a huff of frustration. “To get to Ahava, I guess.”

“We need organization,” Logan interjects. “Skyla, your job will be to find out exactly what the orders are for the region. Gage, you protect her by nailing any Counts that try to get in her way. Ellis—” His cheek rides high on one side with agitation. “Do whatever Skyla tells you, but commit to the cause. You can’t freak out over what your dad might think or everything will go to shit and you’ll wind up dead.”

“You want me to kill Counts.” Ellis deadpans. The crackling fire ignites his features in an array of sunset hues.

“Injure them,” Logan suggests, “kill only if necessary. There’s a faction meeting in a couple days at Arson Kragger’s house. You’re on the line for a tribunal if you’re not careful. Just be an open resource for Skyla and try not to get yourself slaughtered in the process.”

Ellis nods while staring into the fire. “We’re going to find out if they got permission to close the treble.” Ellis pins me with his serious eyes. “You need to watch your back.”

I look over at Gage, who thinks winning the war is out of my league, not to mention the fact he confided it to Chloe. That alone qualifies him for the dubious boyfriend of the year award.

“I’ll be careful,” I say it low.

Especially around Gage.

Chapter 74

Games Children Play

Logan’s birthday wears on. The sky rolls out its star-filled splendor as if God himself orchestrated the astronomical wonder in honor of Logan.

Four sets of bonfires rage in close proximity, entertaining us with their low demonic whispers, their sparks of affection, as the heat kisses our skin.

The roll call of bitchiness is present and accounted for, plus Ethan, and Holden hiding behind Pierce like a mask. I should shove him into the flames for tearing a line through my scalp.

Brielle and Drake snuggle up at the foot of the fire, leaving Emily oddly indifferent. I’ll never understand that love triangle, square if you count Ethan. Honest to God, I think Brielle and Drake have a bona fide open relationship. The kind my mother once accused me of having with Gage—which is laughable. And right about now, I doubt I have any kind of relationship with him at all. If we do, we built it on sand—Gage saw to it himself. If he wants me—wants us—it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up on the bedrock of truth and loyalty. I swear on my father’s grave, one more piece of bullshit springs up that I’m either not aware of, or another one of his half-truths, and I’m going to break some Levatio balls.

Who am I kidding? I’m not going to break Gage’s anything. He’s done enough damage for the both of us by breaking my heart.

“Let’s play a game,” Lexy says, looking up at Logan as if she just propositioned him. She’s either hopped up on lust or she’s been drinking from Ellis’s “special” cooler. Either way, I don’t appreciate the way she’s feather-dusting Logan with her boobs—licking his hair occasionally like she’s some freaking feline.