Entropy (The Countenance Trilogy 3) (23 page)

“I’m going to lay with you now.” He forces my hands up by my shoulders as his face flickers in tune with the flames, his eyes the color of demonic desire.

Lay
? Who the hell has Wes become? I thought I knew him—that I knew what
I
was doing.

Wes crashes his lips to mine, hard and forceful, his tongue plunging in and roaming around like a gator trying to wrestle down its prey. He parts my legs with his knee, gliding his hands down my body, pulling and tugging at my clothes, at his. I can feel him against my thigh, obstructive and piercing. I turn my head to catch my breath and observe the flames braiding themselves together over and over as if they, too, were struggling to survive.

It’s happening.

Wes pushes my knees back to my hips as he lays his full weight over me.

A blackness so consuming clouds my heart. The dark days were coming, meeting me right here with their necrotic hand.

Wes rises over me ready to press in and make me his for all eternity.

We’re to recite the holy creed, adjusted for this occasion
. His dimple ignites soft on his cheek.
Then I’ll make you mine, now and forever.

“We are the Countenance,” Wes starts in, his face inches from mine, stone cold and fierce. Wes has become wholly unrecognizable both inside and out. “We are immortal. Flesh and bones and such are not tethered to our flesh. In this world and outside its bounds…” Wes goes on, but my mind fractures under the duress of his words. All I hear is in this world and outside its bounds, I lose my mortal soul.

And all the while a blond-haired boy with eyes of a stone grey sky spins through my mind with the ferocity of molten flames. Loving him is like dancing in a fire.

“
Cooper
.” No sooner does his name leave my lips than the room claps to darkness, Wes and all of his holy words disappear right along with it.

It’s done.

The only one getting saved tonight is me.

Cooper

I lie over the sacred stone and wait just like the devil told me—Edinger. I can’t help but wonder if I’m not a bigger idiot for believing his bullshit. But, deep down, I’m hoping he was telling the truth. He has to be. Right now that crooked bastard is my only hope.

“
Cooper
,” my name whispers through the breeze, and the stone beneath me loosens. It disintegrates into a vat of fire. A room filled with flames appears. I spot Wes writhing over Laken and reach down, pulling her up from under Wesley’s body with all my strength.

Laken and I land back on that overgrown stone with a roar still locked in my throat. A flash of lightning goes off overhead, and the skies open up in a jealous rage as if Wesley were raining down all his fury over the two of us, over all of Ephemeral as a punishment.

“Cooper!” Laken wraps her arms around my waist, and I press hard over her, pushing both our bodies into the unforgivable stone.

“Is it too late?” My chest pounds against hers as I struggle to catch my breath. “Did he—are you?” Shit. I can’t get the words out. I don’t want to.

“No.” She shakes her head as a mile wide smile spreads over her face. “You were right on time.” Laken glows a sublime shade of pale against the black stone as the rain beads down her face. She reaches up and cups the side of my cheek with her hand. “You saved me, Coop. You always save me.”

My chest loosens. It’s as if every event that’s transpired over these last few weeks has culminated. I lean in, my lips hopeful for a kiss. Laken pulls up until our mouths are less than a breath away. The sky explodes in a fantastic show of bravado as a bolt of lightning crashes down to the boulders and evicts us to the ground with a terrifying jolt.

“Coop!” Laken holds on for dear life as we straddle the edge of the cliff that leads to a rocky crag about thirty feet down.

“Don’t move,” I say it steady, in a calm even tone. One wrong move in this muddy slick we’re balancing on, and we could both break our necks in the most painful way possible. “I’ve got you.” I sidestep us around the boulder, and my left foot slips. I grind in with my right foot until we’re steady again, and neither one of us dares to breathe.

“Cooper?” It comes out ragged. “How did you get into that room tonight?” The wind picks up. It whistles and howls around the boulders as the rain continues to bear down its misery.

“Supervising spirit.”

“You think he’d mind getting us out of here?” Laken squeezes her eyes shut tight as I take another step to the right. She knows who my supervising spirit is. She surmised it for herself a few weeks back.

The soil gives way beneath my foot. Laken slips from my arm, and I catch her by the hand as she falls into the granite pit. I sail right behind her as we free fall toward the jagged rocks below.

Laken thinks I saved her.

And now I’m hoping I didn’t bring her back just to kill her out of sheer stupidity.

A white, glossy floor expands at our feet as Laken and I tumble out of the water-slicked world and into the Transfer.

“Laken.” I pull her toward me as her lips curl on the sides.

“You saved me again.” She bubbles with a silent laugh. “You’re getting really good at that.”

Or very lucky, but I don’t say a word as I pull her to her feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

“No.” She grips me. Laken’s face smooths out as she takes in my features. She looks stunning in her tight white dress, her matching lace heels, and my stomach churns because it happens to closely resemble a wedding gown. “Let’s hang out for a minute.” Her forehead breaks out in worry lines. “I think we should check in on Richard and Kara and see how they’re doing. It must be hard for them. This place is like a graveyard.”

A graveyard. Laken couldn’t have pinned it any better.

Her eyes enlarge. “Pinned
what
any better?”

I give a little laugh. All thoughts are fair game in the Transfer.

“Crap.” I let out a breath. “I meant to tell you this sooner, but I paid a little visit to Ezrina about a week ago and”—I brace her by the shoulders and shake my head—“I’m sorry, Laken. Something went wrong with the antidote, both Richard and Kara are dead.”

“
No!
” She covers her mouth in horror. “They never asked for any of this.” She wraps her arms around me and lands her head on my chest. “It’s those damn Counts. They take and they kill without any regard to who they might hurt.” Laken looks up and hooks her finger over my chin. “Thank you for pulling me out of there. It would have killed me to be one of them forever. Although, I guess, in a way, I sort of am.”

“You are who you choose to be.”

Laken closes her eyes for a moment and nods. “I choose to be Laken Stewart, and, unfortunately, Laken Stewart is a Count.”

A putrid stench emits from behind, and I turn to find the old hag staring us down, Ezrina.

“Come.” Her voice echoes through the bright-lit hall as we follow her down to the Count conservatory. The glass coffins stand upright, each filled to the brim with blue fluid while long-dead Counts float inside to complete the insanity. “Life after life.”

Ezrina gives a whole new meaning to brevity.

“Life after life?” I ask as I tighten my arm around Laken’s waist.

“Here.” Ezrina hobbles her hunched back over to a smaller room in the rear of the facility, and we enter to find two children playing with a deck of cards on the floor.

“Laken!” The girl springs to her feet with her short blonde hair, her upturned nose. She can’t be much older than Marky.

“Kara?” Laken looks to me puzzled.

“Holy shit.” I stagger for a moment. “You did it!” I shake the old hag by the shoulders. “You healed them. You can heal the Spectators—all of them.”

Richard gets up, and I pull him into a quick embrace.

“Slowly.” Ezrina grinds out the word like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Footsteps thunder from behind. “Looks like I’m missing the party.”

There he is, darkening the doorway—Wesley.

Laken takes a breath, and her arms slide across Kara like a seatbelt.

She’s got the right idea.

I have a feeling we’re all in for one fucking hell of a ride.

Wesley

I’ll be honest, it’s not what I expected—Laken and Coop huddle around a little girl and some guy while Ezrina glues her crazy-eyed stare in my direction. I thought I’d find them at Coop’s house—tucked in his bed, already declaring their love for one another with their bodies, but this was a turn for the unexpected.

“What’s going on?” I frown into Laken. I wish I could say that I understood why she pulled the cord, but my ego is far too bruised to accept any reasonable answer. She would have had her family back and an eternity by my side. How in the world did she come to the conclusion that was anything but a winning combo? It would have been. It still can be.

The boy steps forward. He’s about our age, maybe a little younger. I squint at him trying to make out his face, but I don’t remember seeing him around campus.

“We were dead, and now we’re alive.” He scowls into me. “Ezrina revived us with the antidote, and soon all of Celestra will gain their numbers, and their lives, back.”

“What’s he babbling about?” I look to Laken. I want to hear the truth from her, she owes me that much.

“They were Spectators,” she whispers, her chest still heaving from the shock of seeing me.

Holy shit.

I step into them and marvel. “You did this?” I look to Ezrina with her red hair sprayed out like a ring of fire. Her pale face pieced together like a bad quilt.

“Did,” she croaks, proud of her latest achievement.

“You know what this means?” Laken’s entire face brightens, the tracks of her tears still evident. “All of those Celestra prisoners who were forced to partake in the resurrection experiment can have their lives back.”

“What?” It comes from me stunned as shit—unexpected. “And where will they live? Work, for that matter?” You can’t just bring thousands, if not millions, of people back to life and expect a happy ending. Not to mention how pissed they’re going to be.

“The Counts can house them.” She drills it into me. “It’s the least they can do.”

I look up and meet Laken’s sharp stare. She said Count like it’s a dirty word, and every part of me knows she believes that to be true.

“Laken”— I step into her and touch my hand to her shoulder—“please, can I talk to you alone for a minute?”

Coop steps between us, sticking his chest out like some hopped up baboon. Quite frankly, I’m sick of his shit. I’m done playing nice. I don’t care if he does think he’s rescuing Laken from the big, bad Count—that Count being me.

“No, it’s okay.” Laken pushes him out of the way as she takes up my hand. “Wesley would never hurt me.” It comes from her like a threat as if she was just as easily letting me know I shouldn’t even think about it. There’s a look in her eyes that suggests she’s not above carving her initials onto my balls.

“That’s right.” I touch my hand to the soft outline of her cheek, and every part of me groans. I could have had her. I almost did.

Laken leads me out of the Count conservatory and through the long, white corridor until we hit the dismal world of the Transfer—a hell of the Counts’ own making with no sun and no stars, only the blank of night, the bad breath of death lurking in this ever-present night.

I pull her in without hesitating and hold her like that a very long time. Words beg to burst through my vocal cords, but the dam of grief has stopped up the way.

“I love you, Wesley. I do. I always will.” She lands a simple kiss to my cheek and pulls away. “But if we’re going to be together, it should be under different circumstances.”

“If?” My heart pinches in my chest because it wants to stop beating right here on the spot. “It sounds like I’ve got some competition.”

She shakes her head unconvincingly. “You still mean a lot to me, Wes.”

“What about Flanders? Does he mean a lot to you?” I don’t waver my eyes from hers
—
just stand there drowning in the silence that beats by like a small eternity. “I thought so.”