Incendiary (The Premonition Series (Volume 4)) (4 page)

“Are you coming, Russ?” I ask
him over my shoulder.

“Naw,” he says,
softly swinging his golf club against the sand at his feet. “I already know the plan. We can talk on the beach tomorrow when we train together.”

“Okay,” I agree
, not knowing what else to say. I know that my love for Reed is torturing Russell, but I don’t
know
how to fix it. If there’s a solution, I don’
t know
what
it
is
. I
watch
as Russell
walks
away from me, back toward
s
the other end of the island…as far away from Reed and me as possible.

Infighting

“Concentrate, Re
d, shoot…you’
r
e
all over the place,
” Russell breathes
, s
itting
cross-legged
next to me
on the beach
. H
e directs
his clone
’s
image in
front of us to pick up my clone
from her feet and slam her
to the groun
d, dissipating her
like a small
,
mushroom cloud.

“Russ-ell,” I breathe
in a frustrated tone. “Stop killing my clones.”

“But you
make it so
easy…” he trails
off with a smirk until I elbow
him hard in the arm.
He’s as tough as a mountain now; nothing short of everyth
ing I have would hurt him
.

I fa
ll back on the sand
, putting my arm over my eyes to block out the intense sunlight above us.
It i
s so physically draining to create these mirro
r images of me—
my clones
. Russel
l can do it now with no problem. E
ach of h
is clones look and act like his twin.
He can sit next to me on the sandy beach and make the image of himself do whatever he’s thinking, like his mind is within the spirit-like body, carrying his consciousness.

Then
there’
s me.
My whole world spins like I’m o
n the teacup ride at Disneyland
just getting my clone to appear. Directing it and trying to see what she sees is like looking at everything underwater or thro
ugh someone else’s eyeglasses:
e
ver
ything is distorted and blurry.

Russell pulls
my a
rm back from my eyes as he kneels
over me, blott
ing out the sunlight with his huge
six foot five inch
frame
.
“We have time
for one more clone…” he trails off again as he looks
at
my face. “Ah
shoot, Red, I’m sorry,” he says
in a gruff voice.

Leaning back he pulls
a tissue from the pocket
of his board shorts
, dabbing it at
my nose gently.

“Another nose bleed?” I ask
tiredly, taking the tissue fr
om his hand and holding it to my
nose.

“You
have to tell me when you’
r
e
gettin
’ to that point,” Russell sa
ys
, sounding guilty. He put
s
his arm around my shoulder, making me sit up so he can look in my eyes.
“How many of me are you
seein’?”

“Three…no,
four…a
nd all of you should get a hair
cut,” I reply
, trying to mi
nimize the fact that I’m disoriented. He let
s
go of my shoulder to run his hand through his
tawny hair that has
been bleached
in b
lond streaks from the sun. Then
h
e
has to quickly catch me as I begi
n
to topple over o
nto his chest.

“Whoa!” he says, before pulling me against
his bare chest an
d letting me rest my head while he strokes
my back soothingly.
His impress
ive, crimson wings sho
o
t from
the
camouflage of his back as he ho
ld
s
me in his arms, making him look every inch the lethal, Serap
him angel that he
is now. “Ahh
,
I hate when
my wings do that!” Russell admits
with irritation in his voice.

“I know,” I agree
, see
ing exactly what he means.
“It embarrasses me when m
ine
do that
on their own
.”

“
I keep wonderin’ if it would
’ve
b
e
e
n
easier if we were entirely ang
e
lic…you
know? D
oes
t
his
kind of
stuff happen just ‘cuz
we’re part
human, too?” he asks
, sounding frustrated
.

“You mean…if we weren’t half-
breeds
,
would we have more control over the angel
ic
part of our
nature…like our wings?” I ask
for clarity
. Closing my eyes, I fi
nd
that it doesn’t help
the
dizziness,
so
I open
them again quickly.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant,” Russell s
ays
, giving me a quick squeeze.

“Reed said it’s normal. Emotions seem to trigger them. I think age helps. You’re only
, what, twenty now?” I ask
, knowing he had a birthday i
n August that I missed. I close
my eyes again, not
wanting to think of where he had
been on his birthday, but
goose bumps
ru
n the length
of my body anyway, thinking of the church in the Ukraine where he’d been held and tortured by a sad
istic Ifrit
.

“Yeah…that birt
hday was a little dark,” he mutters
,
his hair rising on his
arms as his wings move
agitatedly behi
nd him, kicking up sand. He takes
a quick breath, attempting to calm his heart that I can hear pounding in his chest. “I hope I’ll be able to control my wings completely in the next century or
two,”
he says
with a wry smile.

“I bet it’ll be
much
sooner
than that. Y
ou seem to master e
verything so quickly,” I reply
honestly.
“There’s only one thing you’re go
ing to struggle with, Russell.”

“What’s
that?” he asks with a
smile in his voice.

“I
don’t think you’re ever going to
be able to detach
and become emotionless
like the Seraphim I’ve seen. You’re too human for that…it’s not
in your nature,” I reply
.

“You
only ever met one
Seraphim
,
Casimir
,
and he was
a f
allen
freak, Red,” he replies
. “They can’t all be like him…cold and hard
—
completely evil
.”

“My father is one and he…well, I don’t know what he’s like because I
’ve
never met him, but I imagine he’s a lot like Casimir,”
I reply
, feeling some of that hardness inside of me when I think of him
.

“Ah, you
don’t know that…
he’s a d
ivine angel and
y
ou
don’t know his circumstances—”

“I don’t want to know his circ
umstances, Russell,” I snap
.

“
Y
ou
always were a daddy’s girl—i
n just about every lifetime I had wit
h you
…‘c
ept when you
were a mama’s boy,” h
e
laugh
s
.

I roll my eyes and then have
to h
old on to him tighter as it makes
me dizzier. “I wish I could remember all of our lives together. I’m sure you w
ere
very interesting
as a girl. Were you ever a girlie girl?” I
ask
. His knowledge of all of our past lifetimes together
as my soul mate
is as irritating
to me
as it is fascinating. Just imag
in
ing myself as his love f
or a past eternity is a complete
,
mind-blowing
trip.

“You
always
thought I was hot
,” Russell sm
irks
, not as freaked out as he used to be about remembering our past li
fetimes when he was the female.

“It’s impossible for me to picture yo
u as a girl, Russell,” I reply
, sme
lling his masculine scent that’
s so attractive, just like him.

“Good,
since this is probably the last form I’m ever gonna take, I prefer to be the man…the angel…the man angel…ahhhh…we should come up f
or a name for what we are now. How d
o you like
‘
mangels
?
’
Or, what
‘bout
‘
Sera-mans?
’
” he asks
me in his gentle, chiding way.

I groan
at his attempt to humor me. “That’s awful. I defini
tely prefer to be called a ‘half-
breed
’
or the ‘half-
humans
,
’
” I say
, pushing away from his chest so I can look in his brown
eyes.

“We’re gonna hear that a lot from now on. We might as well get used to
it,” he says
in a cheery voice.

“T
hat doesn’t bother you?” I ask
, wiping my nose and seeing that i
t has finally stopped bleeding.

“Naw, I mean, it’s just jealousy. T
hey all wanna be me,” he repli
es
, looking in my eyes and
checking to see if I can focus on him.

“Jealous
y
?” My eyebrows rise
incredulously.

“Yeah,” he smiles
slowly. “Ther
e’s somethin’ ‘bout me havin’ a soul that makes all the angels I’ve met wanna
be me
. ‘
Course, it helped that I took on the biggest angel I could
find when I first met the Power angels
from Dominion,” he says
, loosening his grip on me a little to see if I topple over again
. I manage to hold my balance, but he does
n’t let me go completely.

“What?” I ask
.

“Yeah…I hadn’t met Preben or I would’ve punched him first, just ‘cuz he’s the biggest
Power I’ve ever seen
. Naw, I hit what’s his name?” Russell
asks
, snapping
his finger
s
as he thinks.
“Tycho—
I think that was his name. Anyway, I had to let them see that I wasn’t puttin’ up with their shen.”

“Wh
at happened?” I ask
, my eyes growing wide
at this new information.

“Ahh, they let us fight for a while before Zee stepped in and broke it up. I was holdin’ my own and that freaked them out a little
, since they know I’m only twenty years old and they’re all like a billion in dog years
,” he grins
. “
They don’t fight like I’ve been trained to fight…when I was a soldier…
when I was just a
man.
They fight like angels and
they
expect certain things to happen.”