Love Beyond Oceans (14 page)

Sebastian gritted his incorporeal teeth and did as the woman who birthed him instructed. When he felt fully formed again, he turned around. His mother leaned against a tree, regarding him silently. She'd taken a human body and he wished rolling his eyes at her wouldn't earn him pain.

The woman who had raised him looked like a little girl of eight. Blonde, blue-eyed, she could have been doing cereal commercials on television. No one would ever guess she was a hell beast who had eaten humans for dinner, which was probably exactly the point.

"Mother."

She nodded to him. "Son."

"What brings you here?" You stupid bitch.

"Things have been going very badly for you." She shook her head. "I came to spare you the wrath of your father. He's ready to come down here, rip you home, and stick you in the basement for the next ten generations."

His temper rose, he could feel it in his cheeks. "I'm winning. I'm the first one of us to ever kill the scribe. They were opened and ready for me to finish. And then you came and did it for me."

"Yes, you killed the scribe. How stupid can you be? He was there for both sides of the equation. You weren't yet able to kill them and they weren't yet allowed to really dispose of you. Why do you think you're still floating around down here without a body?" She sighed loudly. "What if one of them gets the brilliant idea to box you up? Stick you in a magic proof bottle and carry you around until they all die from old age? There is nothing to stop them from doing so since the scribe is dead."

If they'd had anywhere near that much power he'd have been in big trouble long ago. "The thing is, mother—" Calling the eight year old in front of him the name felt utterly ridiculous. He was going to have to power surge for a week to get over this moment. "I took steps very early on to make sure they would never have the powers they did in the past. Not this time around. Separating them from each other, denying them the wisdom of their parents, it was all part of the plan to reach a point where I could clearly dominate the group of them."

"Son, you never want to underestimate the underdog. When have we won in the past? When they were utterly overwhelmed because they underprepared. You had eighteen individuals all struggling every day against you. They never stopped. Trust me, the tide did not turn in your favor."

"Mother…"

She walked over and placed her hand on his arm. "Come on. Enough with this nonsense. I want to feed on their corpses. Then I'll leave you alone to manage this realm on your own. I think there are three Outsiders still out there, if you are so determined to kill their kind today. You have one at your beck and call don't you? The Alexa girl. Really, I don't know how you could stand touching her body. Don't you just hate the smell? Why make creatures who sweat so much?"

His mother rambled on as she always did. He tried to breathe through his temper. Losing it on her had landed him in serious trouble more than once. Sebastian intended to keep this dimension. He wasn't going to let a misspoken word end everything he'd dreamed about. She was right. He'd find Gia, Raquel, and Alexa. They'd all make for delicious kills.

* * * *

Alexa shivered in the darkness. Something was wrong. She walked down the cobblestone streets and clutched her jacket tighter. As far she remembered she never really felt the cold. So what was going on?

She doubled over and barely made it to the side of the road before she started vomiting. The whole day had been the same. She was missing periods of time from her memory. Had she gone and met Sebastian at some house? Alexa could vaguely remember.

When her stomach emptied, mostly of blood, she stumbled a distance further before she lost use of her legs and slid down onto the ground. Leaning against the door of a closed dry cleaner, she closed her eyes.

How and why had this become her life? She wiped at her eyes before she realized she cried. Even when she'd been an unwanted, somehow unadoptable foster child, she'd been better off than she was sitting on the street puking up blood. She'd had Gabriel and the hope of a future. When had it all gone askew?

"Are you done? Feeling sorry for yourself?"

The female voice in her head startled her and she looked around. Dear heavens, was she hearing things now?

"I don't know exactly what you did to be this person you've turned out to be. Trust me, I've made my own mistakes. I don't need to be worrying about yours. If you want answers, meet me around the corner in the bar called O'Malley's. I'm sitting by myself in the corner. If you don't show up, divine instructions or no divine instructions, I'm not bothering with you anymore."

Alexa wiped at her eyes. Had she officially lost her mind?

"Only you can decide if it's worth it to see if I'm real."

As quickly as the presence had greeted her, it passed.

Alexa pulled herself to her feet. What did she have to lose? O'Malley's would be warm. There would be people around to look at, even if no one spoke to her. The feel of other humans around would be something. Only Gabriel and Sebastian had ever reached out to her telepathically. She'd missed the feel. Had she invented the woman so she wouldn't be lonely?

The only way to find out was to go. So, that was what she'd do. She'd thrown up blood on the street. Nothing could get much worse.

* * * *

Raquel waited in the bar, sipping her beer and waiting for the woman she'd been told to help. Mother Theresa she was not, so why the chanters insisted she come deal with this woman was beyond her. She had places to be and psychopaths to avoid.

Fires to somehow prevent starting.

Yet, here she was. In some town in the middle of nowhere waiting for a woman whose brain had felt so muddled it had been like picking through mush to send her words. Not like his. The man on the street who she had felt in the apartment. Speaking with him had been like slipping into a warm bath.
Like coming home.

The woman walked through the door. Raquel watched her from across the room and a sense of both loathing and pity nearly overwhelmed her. She shoved the emotion aside. Raquel didn't usually have immediate reactions to people without giving them a chance first. This woman—Alexa—she carried something with her that she shouldn't have. A presence of yuckiness. Raquel couldn't think of a better description or a more appropriate turn.

Alexa was a woman in need of help.

Six months earlier, when she'd met her, briefly in Maine, she hadn't been as bad off as she now appeared.

Alexa, gripping her coat around her as though it was some kind of lifeline, limped toward her table. A gash on her leg caught Raquel's attention. Something had cut her badly.

Right before she got close, Alexa stopped moving. "I know you. I mean we've met before."

"We have." Raquel motioned toward the chair across the table. "Sit."

For a second, the other woman didn't move but eventually she took a seat and then didn't utter a word.

Maybe Raquel should have spent more time trying to figure out how to converse with strangers and less time working on not killing them because she had no idea what she was to do with the lost lady in front of her. She tried not to let annoyance flood her tone when she spoke. "I was sent to come get you."

Alexa looked left and right. "By who? I don't really know anyone in the world anymore."

"Tell me something. Do you hear things sometimes? I mean other than the obvious where you and I could talk in our heads. I mean, like people who sound like they're singing. Chanting."

Alexa shifted in her seat. "I used to. When I was a girl. Sometimes. Then it stopped. I outgrew the delusion or whatever."

The waiter came over then and Alexa ordered a diet soda. Apparently, she didn't drink alcohol. Raquel took another pull at her beer. If ever there was a woman who should have a drink, it was the huge-eyed lady in front of her. Anything to take the edge of the set of her shoulders.

"Well, I still hear them. All the time lately. And all they want me to do is help you. Why is that Alexa? Who are you that you're so special?"

The waiter returned with Alexa's drink and she took a long sip before she back and covered her mouth with her hand. Raquel stilled. The other woman wasn't about to puke was she? Raquel was many things but a true caregiver she was not. If Alexa started retching, Raquel would get up and leave. They weren't sorority sisters; she didn't have it in her to hold Alexa's hair while she vomited.

Or at least that was how it looked in the movies. Raquel had never been to college and couldn't imagine wanting to be a member of any group who wanted her to join. They'd all have to be sick in the head.

Finally, Alexa answered. "I'm no one. A girl without a family who found one only to lose it. I've been wondering ever since, trying to be strong, trying to still do the things I set out to do."

"We share a similar background. I don't have a family either." Her first foster family had gotten rid of her like a discarded dog on the side of the road the first time she set fire to the house. Then the foster family, which took her in, had all died when she'd lost control.

There were mistakes she'd made she'd never be able to atone for.

If the powers that be wanted her to help the messed up girl then that was what Gia would do.
As long as it didn't involve too many bodily fluids…

"And you can talk in my head. That means we have more than just our lack of parents in common."

Raquel set down her drink with a clink. "Bottom line here, you look like shit. We need to get you in better shape."

Alexa's dark eyes flared to life and for the first time Raquel saw the spark of a backbone in the other woman. "That's a really horrible thing to say to another person. Where I come from, if we can't say something nice, we don't say anything at all. We certainly don't make personal comments to people we don't know."

"Where I'm from, we don't have time for bullshit. So, I'm going to suggest we finish our drinks. Then you are going to come home with me and we'll figure things out together."

Alexa's hand shook holding her soda. "Did you feel horribly sick earlier? Like your whole world suddenly ended and you don't know why?"

Goosebumps broke out on Raquel's body. "As though someone took a knife and shoved it through my chest." As though a piece of her soul had left the planet and she'd never be okay again.

* * * *

Gia gripped at her chest, nearly doubling over in the train station. Around her, people continued on with their business and if anyone noticed they never said. The nice thing about New York City was people minded their own business. Gia, however, wasn't going to stay. She had to go north, get out of the country, find a way to start again.

The pain finally fled and she sat back up. As far as she knew, Outsiders didn't have heart attacks. They died in their sleep or at the hands of demons. In all her visions of her people, she'd never seen one topple over from their heart stopping. Her hands shook and she tried to breathe through her nose. Any attention paid to her was too much. Normally she thrived under admiration but when she ran for her life she didn't want to be noticed at all.

Something was wrong and whatever it was cut deep into her soul. She closed her eyes as tears she couldn't understand threatened to overwhelm her. Hell, when was the last time she had cried at all? Years maybe. Gia forced the crazy day and the dark thoughts from her mind.

"Gia…"

She shivered from the voice in her head. The same scary, persistent monster who stalked her for as long as she could remember. Other than Zane, he was the only person she had ever spoken telepathically to. But unlike her fellow Outsider, her nameless nemesis was most certainly human.

And obsessed.

Gia pulled herself to her feet as the train came. The world seemed darker than before, colors less bright and she rubbed at her eyes. Why had everything gone bland all of a sudden? Like there might never be light or happiness, like she had lost something only she didn't know what it was.

* * * *

Leonardo was thrown backwards into the heat. He reached for Drew but the other man had been sent in the opposite direction. This was it…the end. They'd failed. This lifetime lost to the darkness and under his watch. Why should he be surprised?

Agony overtook him and then there was nothing at all.

* * * *

Zane was thrown from the bed seconds before unimaginable heat overtook his body. Why had he come here? He'd always been better off on his own. He'd never even gotten to meet his soul mate. The girl with the wounded eyes who spoke so softly in his tired brain.

She was his very last thought.

* * * *

Colin's body jolted, the bed catching fire before he did. He cried out. This couldn't be the end. They hadn't even begun yet.

* * * *

Sebastian's mother stopped moving mid step. She whirled around, her childlike eyes huge as she stared at him.

"No."

He looked left and right but saw nothing amiss. "Something wrong?"

"They're messing with time." She gripped his shirt. "One of them is rewinding. No. No. No. You won't even know. You won't remember. Keep this if you can, son. Hold onto the memory. I'm coming back. This will not be lost. Not again. This is why you don't kill the scribe. There is no one left to demand there be order."

Sebastian blinked. He stood in a clearing in front of the Outsider caves. Why was he there? He had the strangest sense of déjà vu as though this had happened before. He shook his head. Why was he in his body instead of his incorporeal form? Had he been talking to someone? He shook his head

There were things to do and he had to get them done. Why was he standing alone?

Chapter Ten

Marina jolted to her feet. She didn't know where she was or how she had gotten there. With her heart pounding in her chest so loud she could hear it in her eardrums, she counted to ten. Nothing was ever so wrong she couldn't take a moment and count ten numbers to calm herself. She knew her name and that she was an Outsider. Huge improvement than the last time she'd been clueless.