“Sounds like a very erotic date.”
“Oh, it will be,” she purrs into her assurance.
The football team bleeds into the area with Coop leading the pack.
Crap.
I land another kiss to Laken’s cheek, then one more just shy of her lips as my body presses into her back.
“Wes, stop,” she whispers.
“Stop what?” I help her do a few quick reps as her body goes rigid.
“You know, what. Cooper is here. I don’t want you making him feel bad.”
I shoot a hard look up at him, and he’s quick to turn the other way.
“Coop is fine.” I land another kiss to her ear. “But if it makes you feel better, I’ll take a quick shower and let you do your thing.” This is a good time to show her I won’t think twice about leaving her alone in the same room with that predator. Besides, sweat was raining from my body just a few minutes ago. I wouldn’t blame her for using Coop as an excuse to get my smelly ass away. “Be right back.” I glide my hands over her hips before jogging back to the showers. I spend the next twenty minutes lathering and rinsing, and all the while imagining Cooper Flanders’ wrapped around Laken like a vine. I dry off and toss my clothes on before heading back.
The weight room has all but cleared out. The cheerleaders are hitting the exit, and I spot Coop with Laken at the door. She nods into him with her eyes dragging down her cheeks, her lips pursed. He’s playing her for sympathy. Poor Coop and his unloved dick. She tries to hug him, but he backs up and offers a half-hearted high five instead.
Laken takes off with Carter, leaving the room devoid of any estrogen-carrying-card members unless you count the big pussy headed in my direction.
“Nice work,” I quip, lying down on a bench with thirty-pound weights already set and ready to go. Coop hovers up above and shakes his head as I push out a quick rep of twenty.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He whips a towel across the back of his neck. “If I were you, I’d cool down. I’d hate to see you spend the rest of your life worried someone might take her affection from you.”
“You calling me insecure?”
“I didn’t call you insecure—you did.” He turns toward the equipment, debating which one his sorry ass will guilt into choosing him.
“You’re not the sharpest tool, Coop.” I land the weights back on the bar and sit up to get a better look at him. He turns to me, and I hold back a laugh. “You think you have it in the bag, that your face and social standing are enough to sway her to your corner, but I have news for you—Laken buried me in her heart a long time ago, and I took root. Death couldn’t stop us, the Counts couldn’t hold us down, and you’re sure as hell not going to stand in our way. We’ve already leapfrogged over you and had one hell of a time doing it.”
His jaws pops, the muscles in his chest twitch.
I jump up and give him a hard shove back. “Watching you squirm is almost as good as hearing her tell me she loves me.”
I storm out of the building and into the pouring rain. A ring of lightning goes off up above like a crown of thorns, and my head explodes with pain as if God, himself, were pressing it into my skull.
I wish I were watching Coop squirm back there, but I think both of us know it was me who was doing the squirming.
Saturday night rolls around, and I make the trek with Fletch to help commemorate the girls’ dorm. The lights dim to a comfortable level as the common room at Austen House is transformed into party central. The music lays out a low, steady rhythm as couples dance in the center of the room. Girls in their finest dresses, guys with not much more than a polo and jeans. Laken appears at the top of the stairs and scans the area as her gaze solidifies on someone near the fireplace. I can’t take my eyes off Laken. Her hair shines like burnished gold. Her skin glows a soft peach as if she were illuminated from the inside. She wears a red dress that hugs her curves to perfection, annunciating her cleavage deeper than I’m used to. She gives a little smile, and her eyes laugh at someone near the fire. I don’t need to look to see who it is. I already know it’s Flanders, and my heart breaks witnessing the exchange.
Fletch nudges me in the ribs. “Everything okay between you two?”
“Why? You in the mood to put my balls in a vise if I say yes?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” He flexes a grimace. “Dude, she’s my little sister.” He shakes his head. “But I care about you, too. Tomorrow night is a big deal for you guys, and I know after that, as stupid as it sounds, you’re going to be more of a brother to me.” Fletch holds out a hand, and I shake it. “Let me be the first to welcome you to the family.”
“Really?” My heart warms at the thought of garnering Fletcher’s approval. Traditionally you save your well wishes until afterwards as to not entice any negative energy from clogging up the ceremony, but I’ll take it from Fletch any damn time he wants to give it.
“Yeah, really.” He nods over to Carter who’s already bopping her way over from across the room. “You know I’m not going to be there. I’d be the first to bust through that wall of flames and pluck your sorry ass off my sister.” He shakes his head with a laugh. “Check out Coop, sulking by the fire as if he wanted to jump in. I bet you’re pretty damn glad he can’t be there, or else he’d make the leap. He’s just that stupid.” He ticks his head to the side. “Poor guy. It must suck wanting someone so bad when you know you can’t have ‘em.”
My stomach pinches because a part of me happens to know just how that feels.
“It must.”
Fletch and Carter collide, and tongues start flying, so I get the heck out of the way before I become a lingual casualty.
I spot Laken in the middle of the room with her beautiful eyes quivering a watery blue, the flames reflecting her tears. She pivots in my direction and forces a smile to come and go on her lips.
“You look good.” Her chest pumps as if she ran a marathon. Her cheeks flush with color, and, for a minute, I think she means it.
“You look impeccable.” My hands glide down her waist, over her hips and back up again.
“Thank you.” Her cheeks darken a shade. “Come here.” She takes me by the hand and leads us to an oversized chocolate cake sitting on a table in the corner.
In light blue icing it reads, Congratulations, Wes and Laken!
My chest loosens “What’s this?” Not that I mind. Hell, I’m loving it. In fact I want to make sure Flanders gets the biggest piece.
“Jen’s way of commemorating the night in a special way. There’s another cake floating around somewhere for Austen House.”
“I love it.” I never take my eyes off her. “And I love you.”
“I love you.” Her arms circle around my neck. “I guess this is our last night in a strange way.”
“Last night?” I pull her in until her hips connect with mine. I know what she means, but I want her to elaborate.
“Before we graduate to far greener, more hormonally-charged pastures.” She buries a tiny grin in her cheek, and my body loosens for the first time in a week because it’s really happening.
“How would you like to spend the night?”
“Just like this.” She picks up my hand and begins swaying to the music.
“As you wish.”
We sway to the rhythm for the next few hours, long after Flanders leaves with his tail between his legs, long after Jen stops the music.
A part of me doesn’t want to stop. I’m afraid everything we are will stop right along with it.
7
Pain in the Offering
Laken
The autumn sky is a deep velvety purple with the stars sprinkled about, haphazard as spilt glitter. Wes asked if he could sketch me, so I grabbed one of the expensive shaggy blankets from off the couch, and we headed to the top of the hill behind Melville. It’s just after eleven. Jen made sure the Austen House commemoration was plain as oatmeal. It was no postgame kegger, not the scent of a blunt lit up the air. Jen is
going to make a fantastic warden someday.
“Like this?” I lay over the boucle cotton, a deep sage that I’m sure I’ll muddy up before the night is through. My red dress sparkles with its metallic threading. My pale legs light up the night like fallen lightning bolts. They glow like alabaster against the expanse of the woods behind us.
“Just like that,” it rumbles from him breathy and deep. It sounds sexual in every way and makes my stomach squeeze tight at the thought of what it might be like tomorrow night at the commitment ceremony.
Wes and all of our love is like a storm—a perfect tempest that shifts and boils with fits of passion, fueled from the memories that echo from the past. Our love thunders and vibrates out of tune, uneasy as if quarreling with itself while testifying its authenticity. Wes is a tidal wave that consumed me long ago—his noble features, that shock of dark hair. I was lost in the deep sea of his eyes before I was twelve. When Wes holds me, I feel the rush of who we were, who we could be again one day if we burn down the lineage that fate saw fit to deal us. I can never accept this new life, these false identities rife with wickedness. And here we are on the eve of accepting this birthright, on the eve of becoming who we never thought we were.
Another storm is upon us, dark and brooding, percolating with evil intent. This new malicious world is ready to crown us king and queen. Wes and I will rule the night—wear the storm clouds over our backs like wings. My heart has become heavy with Wes inside it, stretched to capacity at the seams, ready to burst and rain down heartache and bloodshed all in the name of the Counts. Our love comes equip with fury and vengeance, leaving the past to linger like a ghost who had long since perished, haunting us with the promise of a past it could never bring back to us. Loving Wes feels barren—all this goodness and nowhere to go. We were everything good and right in a casket nailed shut by the Counts.
Coop flashes before my eyes like a poltergeist, hot and alive, burning in a vat of flames. Holding Cooper in my heart is like holding a raging fire. Coop smolders through my minds’ eye as I witness our first encounter in those haunted woods as if it were a fresh memory. I will never forget the tender way he held me in his eyes. Coop saved me from a certain death that day by killing a Spectator for me—one who we would later find out was Emmanuel Tobias, Hattie and Amelia’s father. And now, Hattie’s granddaughter, who shares her moniker, is a Spectator herself, and we’ve yet to regenerate poor Kara and Richard. Thankfully, they’re still safe in the transfer.
Coop and I are barreling a million miles an hour down a narrow thorny path, but sometimes the things that are harder in life are all the more worth the fight. He calls to me in the wind. I hear his voice echo my name through the rattle of leaves in the forest. No matter how hard my mind tries to stray, it always goes back to Coop. I wonder how long after I become Wesley’s Essential that it will take to scour Coop from my mind—I already know I can never scour him from my heart.
I lie back on the blanket and stretch my arms up over my head.
“That’s excellent.” Wes moans as if there were some physical satisfaction taking place simply from viewing me.
The stars wink in turn as if mocking me, as if this were all some cosmic joke, some very long, highly detailed bad dream I would wake from. I can’t imagine what I would do if I woke up in my old bed in Cider Plains and this had all been some warped and twisted nightmare. Tears would be my new friend. I’d pull my heart from my chest and wring it out just to stave off the agony over the fact Cooper Flanders was simply a figment of my imagination.
My body heaves as I take a deep breath.
Cooper. I lose myself staring into the night sky as I try to connect the stars to make up his name, his likeness, the essence of his being. I find Orion’s bow. Coop is a hunter, if you count tracking down Spectators. He’s the best as far as that goes. Too bad he wasn’t able to hunt down Demetri’s son. As far as I can tell that was the only other way to get into those tunnels. Those damn Tobias sisters finally proved themselves fruitless.
“You’re quiet,” Wes whispers as he furtively strokes his pencil over his enormous white sketchpad. It glows like a portal to some other dimension in this cinder-colored world.
“So are you.”
Wes peers over at me from around his oversized journal. His dimples press into his face like a pair of trembling bees.
“I’m finished.” He comes over and glides in next to me, abandoning his work at our feet.
“Let’s see it.” I lean over and peer at the faint tracks of the pencil as they create a lead grey world of trees and stones—my likeness embedded right in the middle. “Wes,” his name springs from me with amazement. “I’d say it’s like looking in a mirror, but I think you were a little generous.” This girl is far too beautiful to ever be me.
“That’s exactly what you look like, Laken. That’s exactly what I see.” Wes gently pushes the hair off my shoulders before bowing into a kiss. “Don’t ever underestimate yourself. I’ve seen the way both men and women look at you, and that includes every soul at Ephemeral.” His hand rides low over my hip. Wes never takes his emerald eyes off mine.
I swallow hard. “Speaking of souls. I can’t help feeling we’re turning in ours tomorrow night.”
“To each other.” He picks up my hand and kisses it.
“And to the Counts.”
“We are the Counts.” His eyes glint in the dim light.
My throat constricts at the thought of belonging to the Countenance for all eternity.
“We’ll belong to each other.”
“The Counts first, then each other.” He kisses my hand again. “It’s God, then family.”
“The Counts aren’t God, Wes.”
“We’ll be closer than you think.”
“You like the thought of all this power, don’t you?”
He gets that sleepy look in his eyes as his fingers sear over my inner thigh. I can taste his lust for me as it spins through the air, thick and sweet as syrup.
A rumbling sound thunders from deep in the woods, and I freeze.
Wesley doesn’t seem to notice as he streams one erotic kiss after another down my neck, down lower still all the way to my cleavage.
An inhuman howl emits from the forest, and this time it’s coming from only a few yards away.
“You know.” I gently pluck his hand out from between my thighs. “I think we should call it a night before things get too freaky.” I shoot a look to the woods. I already know how this night will end if we hang around for another minute—the stench of death, an entire herd of the undead. If anything, Ephemeral knows how to show you a wild time on a Saturday night. “Let’s save the best for tomorrow. You know what they say”—I plant a heated kiss over his lips—“anticipation is half the fun.”
Wes pulls back not bothering to hide the disappointment on his face. “Less than twenty-four hours.” He picks up my hand and threads our fingers. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I’m positive,” it speeds from me. My heart starts to riot at the thought of seeing Lacey in less than twenty-four hours. “And you? Are you sure you want me, forever?”
“Laken.” He shakes his head, his eyes wide and serious. “I have never been so sure about anything in all my life. Just knowing that we’re going to be together, that no one will ever have the chance to come between us. Its more than any person could ask for.” Wes wraps his arm around me before offering a tender kiss that qualifies as almost chaste. “It’s always been me and you. It always will be.”
And deep in my soul, a frightened part of me knows this to be true.
Wes walks me back to Austen House, and I wait until he’s up over the ridge.
“Did you have a great night?” Jen lays her chin on my shoulder, and we look out at the blank canvas of night together.
“Yes. It’s always great with Wes. I thought we should say goodnight early considering what tomorrow is.” I force a tiny smile. “You mind if I borrow your car? There’s someone else I’d like to say
goodnight to.”
“Laken.” Jen closes her eyes a moment too long. “Forget about him. There’s nothing left to say.”
“There’s always goodbye.”
Goodbye is all that’s left between Coop and me.
Coop and all our love is perfect and consuming, an all-out fire that will never be extinguished, and for all eternity, I’ll burn for him.
How can I ever say goodbye?
Cooper
Austen House sucked tonight—big hairy balls to be exact.
Grayson was one inch away from reintroducing me to her nipples. I had to take off before she got in a major assault. Besides, I couldn’t hang around for another minute watching Wes rocking Laken in his arms.
I guess this is it. Their future begins tomorrow, and mine officially ends.
Edinger and the deal I worked out with the devil comes back to the forefront of my mind—win Laken’s heart or live out the rest of my days in the tunnels. It looks like it’s the Counts and me for all eternity. I’ll have to tell Dad. I’m sort of hoping that he and Marky will find a way to visit. Maybe Ezrina would be willing to help.
Shit. How in the hell did everything go so wrong so fast?
Marky struts in and opens the fridge as if she were fanning herself.
“What are you doing up so late?”
“Can’t sleep. I thought maybe I’d have a snack, watch a little TV.” She tilts into me, full with suspicion. “Why aren’t you out with your girlfriend?”
“What girlfriend?” I pluck the peanut butter out of the cupboard.
“You know, my future sister—Laken.”
Her future sister. My heart breaks for Marky. Little does she know that by this time tomorrow, she may not even have a brother.
“Laken’s not my girlfriend, Marky.” Not tonight, not ever.
“Well do something about it.” She looks up at me over the rim of her reading glasses, her hair sprayed out around her in a ball of frizz. “Just ask her to be your girlfriend.”