Roar of the Lion : Celestra Forever After 7 Page 6

  A jag of lightning crackles through the Paragon night.

  I shake my head, trying to make heads or tails out of it. “What do you think that meant?” My mother has used lightning in an effort to communicate with me on more than one occasion. “I’m pretty sure she’s agreeing with me.” I decide. “Of course, she wants Gage and Demetri bowing down.”

  Marshall lifts a brow. “She may just desire for Demetri to lick the dust off her own feet.”

  “She can have him. In fact, I’ll have to see what I can do to prevent him from moving in on my mother once again.” For as long as I’ve known Demetri Edinger, he’s had the serious hots for my earthly mother—my adoptive mother—Lizbeth Landon. “Now that Tad is most likely headed for the big house—where he will live rent-free—a fact that might just titillate Demetri for the unforeseen future, I’m sure it won’t be long before he’s warming the bed in Tad’s place. “Marshall, why do you think Demetri is so obsessed with my mother? I mean, really, she’s just a person. But the way he goes after her, you’d think she were the prize in some celestial game he’s playing. She’s not, is she?”

  He glances upward as if anticipating another bolt of lightning.

  “Let us not dwell on the devil’s love life,” he says. “Let us first find you a new home in which to dwell, then we can tackle the bigger issues at hand.”

  We appear in front of the small boxy rental house Coop and Laken moved into after they got hitched. It looks homey and sweet with a lush flower garden and a couple of toys strewn in the front yard.

  Marshall extends his hand toward the door. “After you, my love.”

  And just like that, we walk right through the knotty pine door and into the darkened living room. There’s a blue glow coming from the hallway and I head that way.

  A clock on the wall reads five-thirty in the morning. And suddenly I feel terrible for barging into their bedroom, waking them up and demanding to have Laken’s body. But once we enter the tiny bedroom, which houses nothing more than a king-size bed, a dresser, and a bassinet, my heart drops.

  Laken is awake, sitting up in the bed, propped up on a stack of pillows. The light is on in the bathroom, washing the room with a peachy glow, and I can see she’s naked, a tiny baby nursing at her chest like a sleeping kitten. Laken has two small children, Charlie—who belongs to Cooper, even though Wes tried to pass her off as his own. Charlie just turned one last August. And then there’s Wesley Junior—Wesley Cooper is his full name. He belongs to Wesley, and he’s just three months old. Both Charlie and Wesley Cooper are still very much bonding with their mother—and father, and by father, I mean Cooper. Speaking of Coop, he, too, appears to be without a stitch of clothing while lying lengthways at the foot of the bed, and at the moment he seems to be dropping a kiss to each of Laken’s toes on her right foot.

  “Oh, Marshall.” I quickly turn my face away. “I’m not sure about this. How long exactly do you think I’d be occupying her body? I don’t know if Cooper can keep his hands off her for an hour.”

  “It could be months, years. Although, as you astutely pointed out, you have a wedding to attend—as the bride, of course.”

  “Laken has two babies to bond with, and she’s just gone back to Cooper. I’m sure she wants to enjoy him, too. Although, judging by the lack of stitches, they’re off to a great start in that department. I can’t do it. We need to find someone else. Take me to Bree.”

  Before I know it, we’re standing in the thick of the fog in the Landon backyard, staring down at that tin can Brielle and my stepbrother Drake choose to live in. Drake and Bree are rolling in cash. Sure, they lost their initial wealth they earned with their Made in Paragon clothing line, but Demetri not only lined their bank accounts with Benjamins once again, he took the tax man off their tails—in exchange for their allegiance to him. He can be a manipulative financial magician that way.

  I head into their trailer first and note everything is askew, clothes and toys are scattered around, and there are dark red handprints on the refrigerator as if a massacre has taken place. I do a quick search of all the bedrooms and note that not a Landon is stirring—because they all happen to be missing.

  “They’re not here,” I say in a panic.

  “Then perhaps they are here,” Marshall says, blinking us into the center of the Landon family room where I see my mother sitting on the sofa with her blouse opened down the front and a blonde little babe suckling away at her chest, or at least to the contraption taped to it. It’s technically a bottle-like pouch with a nipple taped next to the real deal the good Lord gave her. It’s my mother’s twisted way of nursing those that didn’t exactly crawl from her body. And the baby she’s nursing at the moment just so happens to belong to me.

  “Oh, sweet Jaxson!” A hard moan evicts from my throat as I place a hand over my precious baby boy’s back and he wiggles at my touch. He not yet even a month old. “Marshall, he can feel me.”

  “Of course. But your mother will think it’s something of a nefarious nature he’s reacting to.”

  “Like Demetri?” I ask without missing a beat.

  Mom moans. “The poor thing has gas.” She begins to slap his back silly.

  Mia, my younger look-alike sister, saunters into the room and shakes her head at the sight. “When is Skyla going to pull it together?”

  My mouth falls open as I look to Marshall. “Do I want to know what she means by that?”

  Mom clucks her tongue. “Skyla is just upset that Logan has decided to go out of town all of a sudden.” She rolls her eyes. “I can’t believe he would just pick up and head to Italy on his own. And for what? To pick up a suit for the wedding? It turns out, he picked up the chicken pox on the way, too. Probably on the plane. It’s so weird. He and Skyla have a newborn on their hands. You would think he’d want to bond.”

  A dull laugh pumps through me. “Is that the line Rory is feeding her? My God, Marshall, how much time has passed?”

  Mia grunts before he can answer. “It’s not as weird as Skyla telling you to do whatever the hell you want with the brat. I never once heard her talk that way about Nathan and Barron. Speaking of which, I can’t believe she packed the boys up a few days ago and took them to Emma’s for an extended staycation.” She says staycation in air quotes.

  “Oh my God!” I roar over at Marshall. “And a few days ago? Marshall, just how much time has passed since I bit the big one?”

  “Skyla, you must understand we are outside of the earthly time continuum. It might have felt like moments traveling from the Flanders’ residence to where we stand now, but it does appear that several days have passed.”

  “That is unacceptable, and you know it. I have a wedding to tend to.” I grab the wily Sector by the lapels. “And I have people to save and children to raise.”

  Brielle and Drake wander out of the kitchen, each with a cereal bowl in hand. Bree’s hair sits on her head in a messy red bun, and Drake looks pale as ever with his dark hair forming a sharp sickle over his forehead in the shape of a widow’s peak.

  “Look, there she is,” I say as I head on over.

  Drake elbows Bree as they sit at the bar. “The rugrats are still sleeping. Let’s ditch the Honey Oh’s and make another kid in the bathroom.”

  “No.” She shovels a bite of cereal into her mouth.

  “See that, Marshall? Drake is used to being turned down. This just might work. Let’s get on with it.”

  Drake elbows her again. “What do you mean, no?”

  Bree practically gags on the food in her mouth. “I mean, I can’t get into early morning bathroom sex. Besides, I like it when you catch me off guard when I’m sleeping.”

  Every last bit of me straightens. “And it’s a hard pass,” I say just as Emily Morgan walks in with her baby Ella dangling from her boob.

  Emily, too, is pale as paper—hard not to be when you live in the one place on the planet where the sun doesn’t shine—her dark hair is kinky and billowing in every direction. Emily and I go wa
y back to high school. Come to think of it, just about everyone I know goes all the way back to high school with me. Nevertheless, Em and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye. She was, after all, part of the notorious Bitch Squad who made my life a living hell during those latent adolescent years. But we’ve since mended fences and she’s recently sided with me. I’d like to think she wouldn’t mind if I stepped into her skin for a little while.

  Em grunts right at me. “Messenger had better hope I don’t see her today. I might just strangle the life out of her for the way she’s been speaking to me.”

  I suck in a quick breath. “Hear that? Rory is a loose cannon.”

  Marshall lifts a brow. “I think we gathered that once she arranged for your assassination. Where to next?”

  “Let’s try Michelle, Lex, and Nat,” I say, and the next thing I know we’re standing in the living room at Whitehorse where Lexy and Michelle are enjoying a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs.

  Lexy Bakova is a lean, mean—emphasis on mean—Fem fighting machine. Only she’s not so hot on actually fighting them. Or at least she wasn’t. Now that she’s sided with me, I’m looking forward to binding a few Fems right alongside her. She’s still the same trim and fit girl I knew in high school, same deep olive skin, same copper hair that’s cut into a precision bob that hugs her jawbone. And with every passing year, Lexy Bakova gets a little more aggressive, like an unloved pet that slowly goes rabid.

  Michelle Oliver, nee Miller, has always looked strictly a lot like Chloe. Same long dark hair with a hint of red highlights, same glowing wicked eyes. Michelle is by far the intellectual inferior when it comes to the two, but then Chloe is basically an evil mastermind.

  I guess I should be thankful her marriage to Wes didn’t work out because the two of them would have been a force to be reckoned with. And they will be now that they’re working for Celestra.

  However, Michelle’s love life is no better than Chloe’s. She had a brief marriage to Logan’s brother Liam before Lexy decided she wanted him for herself, thus causing any matrimonial bliss Michelle and Liam shared to unravel. Lexy tried to unravel Logan’s love for me about a year ago, but that backfired spectacularly for her. It was because of that, he realized that only I could satisfy his heart.

  Michelle moans with delight as she takes a bite out of her glistening bacon. “Who said Keto sucked? I’ve lost ten pounds in a week.”

  Lexy rolls her eyes. “You didn’t lose ten pounds. Nat recalibrated the scale last week.”

  A heavy scoff comes from behind, and I turn to find Natalie Coleman barreling into the room, her robe hanging open, exposing her cinnamon skin, her boobs flopping back and forth untethered at the moment. Her dark hair is locked in tight kinky coils as it dusts over her shoulders. I’ve always commiserated with Nat about the hair thing since mine is basically a blonde version. Paragon’s weather does nothing to benefit my tresses, but for some reason, Nat’s curls seem immovable as iron springs.

  “Way to go, Bakova.” Nat shoves Lex on the shoulder on her way to the fridge. “I manipulated the scale to make you feel better, Miller. Bakova doesn’t have a heart. That’s why she didn’t mind spoiling the surprise.”

  I give a little laugh as I look to Marshall. “It’s true. Lex is a monster in Nephilim skin.”

  Nat belches and Lexy gives her the finger.

  Michelle rolls her eyes and shovels another heaping forkful of eggs into her mouth.

  I nudge Marshall in the ribs. “Which one are you thinking? They’re all single, so I won’t have to worry about rebuffing any sexual advances. Nat could give a rat’s ass what anybody thinks—people expect that behavior from her. I could really work with that.

  “Michelle is pretty neutral. No one really has an aversion to her either. And I could smooth things out with Liam if she wanted me to. But no hanky-panky. I don’t care how much he looks like Logan. Chloe gets along great with her, too. And then there’s Lexy.”

  A brief visual of Lex and me trapped in the same body bounces through my mind and a mean shiver runs through me.

  “No, definitely not Lex. All she thinks about is Logan. And she’s never had a nice thought about me—well, maybe one, but it was short-lived and fleeting. The last thing I want is to be privy to her fantasies about Logan. I’d end up strangling myself just to snuff the life out of her.”

  Marshall gives a long blink. “Then that’s the one we’ll go with. Let’s get to it so we can get a move on with more important things, namely restoring the Sectors to their rightful standing.”

  “Marshall”—I squawk, incensed—“not funny. And this is not all about you and your sexy Sector brothers in arms.” I blow out a quick, not quite needed breath. “Okay, fine. It’s just as much about the Sectors as it is Celestra. But let’s be serious, Lexy and I would be a nightmare. Who’s next?”

  “How about Mia or Melissa?”

  A hard groan comes from me. “Mia is getting busy with Revelyn Booth, Dr. Booth’s oddball biker son.” Although he has cleaned up for Mia as of late. He put away the whips and chains, shaved down that critter that lived on his face, and morphed into the Wolf of Wall Street. “Mia would kill me if I denied her that daily dose of Rev she seems to require. And I have it on good authority Melissa is sleeping with Gabriel Armistead. Come to think of it, anybody who’s slept with Gabriel Armistead is off my list. Both Mia and Melissa are defiled by default.” Mia was married to the guy for like five hot and messy minutes.

  Marshall narrows those glowing eyes over mine. “That leaves a small pool of potential suspects.”

  “It does? I can’t think of any.”

  He nods my way. Marshall Dudley looks serious as a heart attack.

  “It leaves just one, Ms. Messenger.”

  “My mother? Oh no.” I shake my head emphatically. “Lizbeth Landon is defiled through and through. I’m sorry. If the fate of the universe depends on me to wear my mother like a coat, it’s just going to have to look somewhere else for help.”

  “I didn’t have Lizbeth in mind. But the upside to selecting your mother would be that you can bond with Master Jaxson once again.”

  A hard whimper comes from me. “It is tempting. But she’s my mother. I’m not sure I could handle being in her body, seeing her body. I think there are some boundaries a mother and child should not cross—and bodily possession is one of them.”

  Michelle and Lexy almost come to blows over the last piece of bacon while Nat documents the whole thing on her phone, but Marshall and I continue to ignore them.

  Marshall gives a mock bow. “The goose stands alone.”

  “What goose?” I take a quick inventory of the kitchen, only to see Nat drinking straight from the OJ carton and Michelle going for another helping of bacon. Lexy is busy texting someone now, and I look over her shoulder to see it’s a picture of her in a bikini, bending over and she’s sending it to Liam.

  Lexy hits send and grunts. “So who’s going to clean up that mess in the lab?”

  I look to Marshall. “What mess?”

  Michelle retches as if she were about to puke. “I’m not touching it. As soon as I saw that head on the floor, I hightailed it out of there. I’m a surface dweller from now on.”

  “Head?” My eyes widen as I look to Marshall. I don’t bother questioning the surly Sector. Instead, I speed my way through the door, through the walls and down to the Wonderground, the exact replica of Ezrina’s laboratory that she had in the Transfer. This one happens to span football fields underneath the island, and the trio of women in the kitchen has taken to rent-free dwellings down here as well.

  And then I see it—see him. Gage Oliver’s head lying in a pool of blue keeping solution, and that glass box his primal apex was displayed in sits in pieces, shattered all around him.

  “Oh my God.” There is far too much keeping solution to have just come from the tiny container. It looks as if a sea of it had spilled. Had I needed to touch the ground my ankles would be covered. I float around in a spastic state,
taking inventory of all the damage. Every glass tube Ezrina used to house the dead, or more recently the Spectators, has been shattered—the solution drained from each of them. All of her pricey equipment has been smashed to pieces, and there is no trace of Ezrina, Nev, or Alice—but then I already knew that.

  “Marshall,” I pant at the devastation before me. “Take me to that monster.” I glare over at Gage Oliver’s head lying on the floor. “I need to speak with him.” A thought hits me, and I suck in my next breath. “He’s the one I choose to possess! I want to take over Gage Oliver’s twisted frame, and I demand you make this happen. I’ll right all the wrongs in less than a day. I’ll land Celestra and the Sectors on top so fast your head will be on a sexy swivel.”

  “Demand as you will, I have no jurisdiction over his corporal frame, and you know that.”

  “Let me guess.” My shoulders sag with defeat. “Demetri has a protective hedge over him.”

  “Gage Oliver is a protective hedge. Once you’ve been issued a new body, built to withstand eternity, there is no destruction—no possession possible. He is marked as one of His own.”

  “What a waste of a mark that was.” I glance to the ceiling. “Fine.” I head over to where his head lies. “I’d better pop him in the freezer until Ezrina can deal with this mess.” I try to pick him up by the hair, but my hand swipes right through him. “Wonderful. It’s official. I’m useless in this ghostly state. Marshall, you’ll have to do the honors.”

  His cheek glides up one side as he snatches up a handful of that lush dark hair that once belonged to the version of Gage I loved best, and he picks him up.