Celestra Forever After Read online

“That’s all I want.”

  A loose grin breaks out on my face, and I can’t control it.

  Skyla and I are ready to cross that final threshold.

  We’re standing at the proverbial door, and I want to make sure we do it right.

  The hell if I know what right is, but I know for a fact it’s coming.

  After church on Sunday, Skyla and I work a shift at the bowling alley. Ellis has this place running like a fine-tuned machine, and I’m glad because I’d never have the time to take care of it like he’s doing.

  “Thanks man.” I slap him over the shoulder after the crowd dies down.

  “For what?” He passes Drake a free soda, and I rethink my stance.

  “For taking care of the bowling alley. I’m sure if Logan were here he’d thank you, too.”

  “Dude”—he cracks open a soda himself and offers it to me before taking a swig—“that fucker is getting on my last nerve.” Ellis shakes his head before downing the rest of his drink. “His brother is a pretty cool guy, though. But Logan, man, he’s a real head case these days.”

  “What?” I glance over at the far end of the bowling ally where Skyla and Brielle are sneaking in a game. “So you’ve seen Logan and Liam. Where are they?”

  “They’re at Dudley’s. Liam’s been killing me on the battlefield, if you know what I mean, but Logan’s got his head tucked so far up his ass it’s like he can’t enjoy life anymore.”

  “That’s because he’s dead, Ellis.” I cut a look out the window only slightly pissed that Logan chose to reveal himself to Ellis Harrison of all people before me.

  “I agree,” Drake pipes up, bobbing his head into his drink. “He’s been at the Gas Lab all week talking to Chloe and Pierce. It’s like he’s a zombie or something.”

  Chloe and Pierce no longer exist in their natural forms, but I’m pretty sure explaining that to Drake would be a lost cause, so I don’t bother.

  “So he’s back.” I fold my arms over my chest and relax against the counter. “I guess I’ll be next.” I stare over at Skyla because I know for a fact I won’t be next—she will. “Or maybe I’ll just wait my turn.” He said he’d hold off until we cemented ourselves as a couple. I shake my head. It looks like Logan isn’t ready to let that happen anytime soon. Not that I could really blame him. I’d be moping with the best of them if the situation were reversed.

  Ellis pulls out the disinfectant and gives the can a quick shake.

  “So what’s up with you and Messenger?” He nods over while sizing her up. “She put out for you?” He squirts the aerosol into the air and takes a whiff.

  “Shut up.” I groan, thankful that Skyla and Brielle are nowhere near this conversation.

  “Dude, I’m just saying, you’ve been a little tense around here yourself. I can’t help but wonder if she’s shutting you out.”

  “Skyla’s not shutting me out. I’ve never technically been in.” Crap. Did I just go there?

  Ellis and Drake both blow back a notch as if I’ve spoken the impossible. And for them, holding out this long probably would be.

  “Well tell her to get in”—Ellis points hard at his crotch—“or get the eff out.” He sprays the solvent in the air again and takes another whiff.

  “Would you give me that?” I don’t hesitate snatching it from him. “And I’m not giving her some stupid ultimatum. Besides, I’ve already got a game plan.”

  Harrison loses himself in a minute-long howl. “Effin’ Oliver.” He slaps my back so hard, I swear I feel a vertebrae pop. “The man with the plan.”

  “Dude”—Drake leans in ready to impart his nonsensical advice—“shake your balls at her. It gets ‘em going every single time.” He glances over his shoulder. “That gets my girl moving every night of the week if you know what I mean.” He and Harrison share a fist bump, and I’m quick to smack Ellis’s hand away.

  “Ellis, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your balls away from my sister. If I hear you touched her like that, I’ll lose all patience.”

  “You lose all patience?” Ellis lets out a howl as he digs for something under the counter. “They should put up a statue in your honor, you’re so damn patient. Skyla doesn’t know how lucky she is to still have you hanging around.” Ellis pulls out a sheet of paper and draws a giant set of parenthesis before slashing a small X where the two ends meet at the top. “Here, let me help you. X marks the spot my friend. That’s where you’ll want to set up shop. But be warned, it might take her a good long while before she’s shouting Ellis, Ellis, Ellis!”

  I glare at him a moment.

  “All right, or in your case, Gage. Anyway, make tiny circles and shit until she starts to get off. Go fast, but not too hard, and you’ll have her melting all over you in no time.”

  “You must be pretty whooped.” Drake shakes his head, sorry for me. “So what’s the plan?”

  I glance up at Skyla and whisper, “Marry her.”

  He all but knocks over his drink. “What the fuck would you go and do that for?”

  “Because I want to. Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Dude, is that why she’s holding out? She’s had you by the balls for a measly band of gold all along. Diamonds and gold.” He slaps me over the shoulder. “Worse sex trade of our time.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Now to figure out where and how to propose.

  Skyla’s laughter echoes through the bowling alley, and I’m mesmerized by her. Maybe the bowling alley? After all, this is the exact same place I first laid eyes on her, the day we officially met.

  Or there’s always Rockaway.

  Yeah—Rockaway.

  Logan

  Near midnight, Dudley’s overgrown home blossoms into a den of debauchery and perversion. The thick scent of sex and booze lights up the air as a full-fledged brothel breaks out around me. There’s an oblong mirror by the piano that acts as a porthole to some seventeenth-century bordello, and, low and behold, every one of the raunchy ladies of the night are present and accounted for—entertaining an entire shit load of frat boys Ellis imported from Host. Of course, he’s raking it in—making a profit on night one, unlike me.

  I head over to Harrison as he conducts the money grab at the door.

  “We should probably knock this off,” I say, trying to figure out where the hell Liam went and with whom. I tried to tell him these were lice-infested beauties with old school STDs guaranteed to knock his balls right off his body, but he was stoned, and drunk, and had a hard-on he’s been using like a crutch all night.

  “Dude, I’m making money hand over fucking fist.” Ellis barks out a laugh while snapping up twenty-dollar bills, fast and furious. “I ran over to Host to drop off fliers and caught the tail end of the G-man’s pre-game. Dude—Gage is buffed out. You got to see him. Game sucked. Defense is off if you ask me.”

  I’d like to see Gage, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want me hanging around just yet.

  “Yeah, well, nobody asked you.” I swat him over the stomach. “I’m going to head out back and see if I can’t find Dudley. I want to end this mess before the Paragon PD shows up and arrests a bunch of women who bit the dust three centuries ago.”

  The next douche in line leans over Ellis’s shoulder. “You got old ladies in there or something? I thought you said this was a fresh batch of love honeys?”

  “They are.” Ellis shoots me a look. “They’re as fresh as they come.” He takes the asswipe’s money, and the line moves along. Ellis digs into his pocket and fishes out a fat blunt. “Take this.” He slaps it in my hand. “Chill out. Find some chick that looks like Skyla and have some fun, dude. Time flies when you’re doing it and all that good shit.”

  “Right.” I head back into the bustling estate. I drop the doobie on the floor and grind my heel into it like it’s a cockroach.

  The piano is going off with an explosion of ragtime music. The keys move so fast it looks as if someone is shaking them out like a sheet. Of course, it’s playing itsel
f. Sort of reminds me of my stay in the Transfer. I need to get out of here, hell, I’d take the Transfer over this hooker hovel any day. Then it hits me, and I know exactly where I want to be.

  I head out the back into the still of the night, the laughter and drilling of the ivory dissipates the further I get away from the house. I bypass the corral with its braying horses, the lazy-as-hell llamas, and head over to the barn. Dudley’s been spending an awful lot of time out here, and, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why, well, other than Ellis’s sock collection amassing behind the furniture, the belching contests he and Liam have been propagating nightly, and don’t get me started on the stench, especially after Ellis treated us to the late night food truck offerings.

  “Dudley,” I belt it out. I’m not in the mood to kick the mounds of hay he has lying around to see which one he might be hiding under.

  A flurry of whispers come from the far end, and I freeze.

  Is Dudley out here with some chick? My chest thumps with a laugh. Looks like all this I’m-waiting-for-you-Skyla bullshit he fed her was just that. Knew it.

  I focus in on the far end of the barn and teleport over, stealth as a light driving ninja. A panicked set of whispers ensue, and I pluck out my phone. Damn straight I’m getting a picture. I can’t wait to use it against him, too. I bet it’s that chick Marlena that bears a striking resemblance to Chloe. She’s spent all week trying to land Dudley horizontal. I stick my phone in the stall and snap away just as a four hundred pound mass of muscles knocks me down from behind and leaves its hoof print on the back of my head before trotting away.

  “Shit.”

  The girl runs out, and all I see are a pair of pale legs, her fists bunched up in her emerald dress as she hightails it the hell out of here. I catch a glimpse of her long, blonde hair—those familiar curls give her away.

  “Skyla, wait!” I jump up and give chase into the thick of the forest, but it’s so damn dark I nearly knock myself out on three different occasions. “Skyla!” I scream so loud my voice comes back to me as an echo. The cold Paragon air knifes its way into my lungs as I pant after her. The fog has softened the landscape, and I welcome the dew settling over my skin as my clothes stick to me like wet paper.

  “Now look what you’ve done.” Dudley pops up next to me, adjusting the buckle on his belt. “You scared her away like a frightened kitten. I doubt she’ll be back for a good long while.”

  “What are you crying about? That whore is a dime a dozen. Turn around and pick up another wench right out of your living room.”

  Dudley knots my shirt up with his fists and jams me into the trunk of a pine so damn hard I swear I’ve left an impression.

  “That was no whore, nor will I tolerate you insinuating she’s dispensable.”

  “Crap.” I lean my head forward, and the landscape splits in two for a second. I look up at the seismic Sector and bleed a grin of satisfaction. “Knew it—it was Skyla.” His features dull out because he knows he was bested, and I push him the hell off me. “Is she cheating on Gage?” Words that I never thought would come from my mouth.

  “No. Jockstrap has yet to forge a union.” He dusts his arm off. “Which reminds me, the next time I’m up for a dalliance in the barn, I’m erecting a protective hedge that doubles as an electric fence.” He spears me with a look. “Believe me, once you connect with it, you’ll wish for death in the traditional sense.”

  “That’s my problem, I can never seem to find it.” Not that I’m looking. “You know what I do want to find?”

  “If you’re about to demand another ‘burger run,’ you can forget it. I’ve double checked the manual, and it was a clear violation for you to insist I do a ‘drive by’ for a dozen dollar cheeseburgers at three in the morning.”

  “You’re my supervising spirit. You do as you’re told.”

  His lips twitch with the hint of a smile, and something about that low lying growl he’s omitting lets me know I’ve crossed the line.

  “Is that what you dragged me out here for?” His eyes ignite like two angry torches. “To tell me something?”

  “Yes.” I blow out a white plume in the direction Skyla ran off in. “Take me to the Transfer. I want to find Demetri’s son and shake the shit out of him for the fun of it.” Maybe then Wes will cough up the real truth of why the hell he’s here, and, more importantly, why the hell he’s wearing Gage Oliver’s face like a mask.

  The paper lantern fog is exchanged for a dense blue smoke that swirls around our feet. Dudley lands us outside of the lab and into the dark underworld with its macabre landscape—nothing but burnt out trees, a vast desert of disappointment under a horrible lavender sky. The discards from eras gone by roam the streets. Women in large hoop skirts, men with handlebar mustaches and cumbersome tuxedos with top knotted ties walk arm in arm with the ladies. They swarm around us with their ceaseless chatter as if we were novelties. The stench of a burning carcass seeps into my nostrils, and I dig my face in my sleeve a moment to catch a decent breath.

  “Where to?” I glance around. It never changes here. It’s destitute, and lonely, and you can feel your soul trying to claw its way out of this hellhole like a cat at the bottom of a well. This is truly a place for the damned. And truthfully, I can’t think of a better place to house Demetri’s son and Chloe.

  He nods over to the haunted mansion, an oversized estate that happens to be the twisted doppelganger of the one Demetri erected for himself on Paragon, albeit this one is nothing more than a ramshackle haunt for the haggard residents.

  Something dark and sinister hovers just past the skeletal mansion with its crooked frame and rows of broken windows.

  “What the hell is that?”

  An ebony-colored villa sits in the vast desert, tall and looming. It looks storybook-like with its cylindrical towers that spear into the sky. Its grand entrance is tall enough to greet a dinosaur.

  “Looks like someone wanted to let Daddy know he’s got a bigger dick,” I say as Marshall and I storm the castle. I point at the double doors, each adorned with the face of a roaring lion, the eyes bulging as if it were caught mid-strangulation. Dudley holds out a hand, and the doors creak open. It’s dimly lit inside with the only light coming from a raging fire in the cavernous room to the right.

  “Holy crap.” I groan as I take in the elaborate décor. The floors and walls are covered in limestone. The room is adorned with heavy wood furniture, each piece far more ornately carved than the last. In the center of the room sits a globe immersed in water, rolling continuously as a wash of liquid rinses over the top. Against the far wall, a fireplace, large enough to roast a bear on a spit, crackles with raging flames. Just above that, a gilded mirror stretches to the ceiling with a wrought iron vine and roses snaking its way around it—the glass inside filled with brewing smoke. “Nice touch. I suppose he gazes into it each morning and asks who’s the fairest of them all. And from the looks of Wesley, I’m betting it’s still Gage.”

  “I wouldn’t give young Wesley that much credit,” Dudley spews.

  “And why’s that?” A thunderous voice booms from behind, and we turn to find my nephew’s features whored out to this Countenance wannabe. We all know he’s a Fem at heart.

  “Simple,” Dudley croaks. “Because of the lineage you keep. It affords you an ego the size of Ahava. You’re as shameless in your vanity as you are entitled.”

  That about sums up Demetri—entitled. And if Dudley is right, and he always is, it sums up his spawn as well.

  To his left, two large glass vials catch my eye—ten feet tall, with a circumference of about two feet wide. They’re each filled with blue fluid, back lit as if to illuminate them as art. I recognize them as the exact ones Ezrina had in her laboratory—the ones she used to store dead Counts in—the same one my body happens to be floating in, safely locked in a vault back on Paragon.

  “What do you want?” Wes strides over toward the globe in its watery grave and skims his hands over the top, making the mammoth stone jump
at his command.

  “What do you want?” I make my way over, agitated, because for one, I can’t get over the fact this isn’t Gage.

  “It’s uncanny isn’t it?” He cracks a dull smile, and those familiar ditches in his cheeks dig in.

  “No stone unturned,” I muse. “I guess the devil really is in the details.”

  “Not true.” Wes glances to the floor a moment, and when he looks up, his eyes are glowing like green flashlights. “Mine aren’t the right color.”

  The floor bucks and rocks.

  Something about this entire experience reeks demonic, and I’m about to hit the exit.

  Wes steps toward me. “But I can rectify that.” His eyes cut out the light show and morph into the perfect shade of cobalt just like my nephew’s.

  “Shit,” I mutter under my breath.

  “It gets better.” His forehead bulges at either end as a pair of horns spring forth, thick and curled skyward like that of a ram. He loses the headgear as quick as it came and trades it in for an oversized pair of white-feathered wings that span five-feet on either side. “Or perhaps this is more to your liking?” The feathers turn to cinder, then black as pitch, and his features elongate with the shadows, making him look scarier than shit. He morphs back into Gage and offers a simple smile.

  “Impressive.” I glance back at the glass caskets. “Expecting company? Or is that where you and Bishop hop in to relax after a long day of playing with the dead?”

  “Did someone call my name?” The clatter of heels brings forth none other than the girl who decapitated me in the ethereal plane—the one who inverted her entire existence trying to win the heart of the real deal, Gage.

  “Ms. Bishop.” Marshall mock-bows as she sweeps into the room with her red silk robe, open low in the front—her six-inch stilettos that look as if she’s walking on tiptoes. Her hair is down to her ass, black as midnight, her face as sculpted as ever. Chloe Bishop looks as if she could give any supermodel a run for her money, and, yet, all I see when I look at her is dross, and scum, and the vilest of creatures to ever walk the earth—not to mention the fact she’s a traitor to Celestra.