Cataclysm (35 page)

She put her hands on his forearms. “You worry too much, Andrew Dickens. If this is what it takes to save Dominic and Colton, then I’m doing it.”

He released her shoulders and stood to his full height. “Not without practice, you’re not. I’ve received enough threats from your boyfriend to know that he’ll have my arse if I let anything happen to you, so let’s see how using that much concentrated Light energy will affect you.”

Kerrigan’s eyes brightened with anticipated excitement. They had found the solution to their problem, and the nightmare would soon be over. Then she could get on with her life with Dominic, raising their baby in a loving home like every other normal family.

But, wait... Would banishing Drake help Dominic’s situation?

“Drew, what about Dominic? Will this lift the curse from him? Will he be okay once I get rid of Drake?”

“I honestly don’t know the answer to that, Miss Cruz. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed and hope that it does, yes?”

“All right.” She clapped her hands together. “Tell me what to do.”

After a few moments spent getting her to a meditative state, Drew coached her through the process per his father’s instructions.

“You must call upon the energy you have harvested from my bloodline, as well as from your own. Concentrate on pulling it into a central location. Feel the warmth of the Light as it courses through your veins, gathering in that place inside you where instinct, pride, determination, and courage dwell. Do you feel it?”

She could feel it, although if you asked her where that place was, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you. There was no real name for it, but it was somewhere between the faith that had been instilled in her from Grammy since birth, and the belief in something greater—a mystical magic borne of the thing that made people persevere even when all hope seemed to be lost.

Her smile spread across her face from her excitement. “It’s... it’s... there are no words to describe it.”

He chuckled. “Sounds like you’ve found it, then. What you’re feeling is something older than time. It is everything good and pure, everything that has been or ever will be. It has power beyond what any mere mortal can comprehend. It is life; both the creation and demise of all that we know. You’re feeling the Light in its most pure, undiluted form. If you can manifest that power, if you can control it, you can move souls beyond the mortal world and into the realm where they belong.”

Kerrigan was too overcome by what she was feeling to taint the moment with insignificant words. Drew watched as her skin came to life with an angelic glow.

“You’re doing a fantastic job, Kerrigan. How do you feel?”

She nodded that she was fine. Her whole body vibrated with the surge of power cultivating inside of her. The warmth the energy produced made her feel feverish and slightly weak, but she had to push on.

“Good. Now, let it grow until it’s bigger than you, too large to contain, but be careful. I don’t want you to overdo it.”

Not heeding his warning, Kerrigan went for full glory. She was determined to prove she could handle the power and harness it to save the ones she loved. Visions of Colton and Dominic in their weary state flashed before her eyes. The pity she felt for them was almost overwhelming, and she felt the Light grow exponentially.

Drew saw an uncontrolled flare from the Light that had engulfed her and became concerned. “Careful, Miss Cruz.”

Thoughts of the life growing inside her came to mind. Would it grow up without a father, never knowing how wonderful a man Dominic was? Would the child be forever haunted by the same plague that now threatened its father?

She trembled, the jack-hammering vibration clanking her teeth together. Her eyelids quivered, and her head thrust back with the force that bolted through her like lightning.

“Pull it back, Kerrigan! It’s too much!”

She saw the ravens overpowering her grandmother again, extinguishing her Light and taking her life. A woman so kind and free of any malicious intent toward any living being. She burned with the intensity of her desire to right the injustice of it all.

“Stop! Let it go, Guardian!” Drew’s orders fell on deaf ears.

Kerrigan was lost to the power, lost to the knowledge of what she had to do. Colton and Sarah Grayson, Availia Cruz, an unborn child, and most of all, a man who had risked everything to save the ones he loved. And, for what? So that Drake, something that shouldn’t be, could alter destiny, alter free will, alter fate so that he might enjoy the same freedoms he was attempting to rape from so many others?

A blinding explosion of Light flashed, engulfing her and forcing Drew to shield his eyes from its intensity. Kerrigan let out a blood-curdling scream not of pain, but the relief of releasing the overwhelming supremacy that was rocketing through her system. A shockwave of energy pulsed through an unknown radius surrounding them with Kerrigan as the center point. When it was gone, Drew looked to find his counterpart lying on the ground in an immobile heap.

“Kerrigan!” he shouted, running over to where her body lay. He felt for a pulse, finding one that was steady, yet very faint. “Dominic!”

Within seconds, Dominic was out the back door and running down the steps. When he saw Kerrigan’s lifeless body, all sense of weariness evaporated as adrenaline pushed him forward until he was standing over his mate.

“Goddammit!” He gathered her limp body in his arms, a sense of déjà vu reminding him that he had done this before. “The passion flowers!” He nodded toward the vine along the perimeter of the garden. Then he stood and resituated Kerrigan into a comfortable position, prepared to sprint into the house and up to the bathroom. “Get a shitload of them, and hurry! What the fuck did you do to her anyway?”

“I didn’t do anything to her! She wouldn’t listen to me. She pushed too hard—she’s always pushing too bloody hard. And with her pregnancy it was just too... much...” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. The heat of the moment had a way of turning people inside out and not giving them a chance to think about what they were saying, or the fallout from having said it.

Dominic stopped. He shook with fear, eyes wild with concern, beads of sweat on his forehead—yet his face was blanched, his gaze distant and catatonic. His muscles were poised to take flight, but he remained unmoving. He looked down at Kerrigan, trying to find the answer to the question he only barely spoke.

“She’s pregnant?”

The attic bedroom was in total disarray. A cyclone of rage, anger, and betrayal had wreaked havoc on the small room. That cyclone had a name—Dominic Michael Grayson.

The wardrobe was flung open with its contents spilled out into the floor like it had gone on one hell of a binger and then vomited its innards. The top of the dresser was swept clean, the mattress flipped onto the floor, and there might have been a hole in the wall that hadn’t been there before hurricane Dominic blasted through the place.

Said hurricane was slouched on the futon amid the chaos of his destruction. Having actually taken the time to turn the futon back over, he sat with his guitar in his lap, lazily strumming the chords to
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
. The tempo was off, much too slow, but he didn’t care. Hell, it was a wonder he was functioning at all. His body might have calmed down, but his thoughts were still violently swarming like a closed mosh pit at a Slipknot concert—only not as controlled.

Kerrigan was pregnant.

After hearing the news from none other than Drew,
not
Kerrigan, the shock had zapped him of all his energy and forced him into his spectral mode once again. Thankfully, Drew had recognized what was happening and caught Kerrigan just as she had slipped through Dominic’s transparent hold. It was a mad dash to get her into the house and up to the bathroom at that point. Although he couldn’t do a damn thing physically, Gabe knew what was needed, proving he had paid attention the one and only time this had happened to her before.

Even if he had been in his physical form, he didn’t know how much help he would have been. Of course Kerrigan’s health was his main concern, but he had just had a major bomb dropped on him, for Christ’s sakes.

He was going to be a father.

Once the passion flower extract had been administered and she had seemed to be coming around, Drew and Gabe had rushed her to the emergency room for a full checkup. Colton went along as well, but it had been with a great deal of reluctance. He had wanted to stay with his older brother who, in his ghost form, couldn’t exactly go along for the ride to Flagler Hospital. Needing some time to himself to sort shit out, he had told Colton to get the fuck out. There was no reason for him to play audience to the implosion that was ticking away inside of him.

As it turned out he was perfectly capable of affecting solid things in his apparitional state after all, the evidence of which was scattered all around him. He would clean it up—when he fucking felt like it.

Kicking his foot out, he heard a crunch and only slightly adjusted himself to see what knickknack lay in carnage under his size twelves. The picture of his most precious childhood memory laid on the floor face up with an angry fracture through the glass. The irony of its symbolism didn’t escape him. No matter how impenetrable he had thought his happiness, there would always be something strong enough to crack it.

God. Dammit.

It wasn’t that he was disappointed, or even unhappy about the news. It was the fact that, much like Colton, she hadn’t felt like she could tell him something that damn important. But she
did
tell Drew, didn’t she?

He put his pearl-blue guitar pick in the neck of the instrument and propped it against the stereo, one of the very few things that hadn’t suffered the wrath of his earlier fit. Slouching back into the futon again, he exhaled a long breath and closed his eyes.

A voice from his dream ricocheted through his thoughts, sending shivers up his spine and reminding him just how very fucked up the situation really was.
“You can’t keep me from my grandchild, silly boy. My blood runs through those veins just as much as it runs through yours.”

That was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? He should be happy that he had a baby on the way. But how could he be when that baby’s life was in danger simply because it was sired by the bastard child of a monster? He, or she, wasn’t even born yet, and already the doom and gloom of his curse loomed over it from association alone. Drake’s threats, the danger his child would be in, and the lengths the mother of that child would go to protect her baby were prevalent in his mind. Kerrigan would stop at nothing to ensure the safety of their family, so what risk might there be to her as well?

And the one that should be there to protect them? Yeah, he might not even be around to do his damn job. Hell, at the rate he was pulling the disappearing act as of late, he probably wouldn’t even be around to
see
the birth of their child, much less to help protect it.

So, why was he so upset over the blessing that had been bestowed upon him and Kerrigan?

Because he was dying. Because there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Because like his own father, he wouldn’t be there for his child. Because all those things made it not so much a blessing, but an addendum to his curse.

He swallowed down the urge to scream at the powers that be that dealt him the cruel hand he was forced to play. Screw that. Holding it in was driving him mental faster than his unfortunate circumstances, so he let it out. He let it all out. Veins bulged over strained extensor muscles as he clenched the hair at his temples, bared his teeth, and let it go. The agonizing roar that erupted from his chest ripped at his vocal chords, carrying with it all the fears he would not admit, the defeat he could not acknowledge, and the anger he should not have felt. He declared it all in that moment, and he didn’t give a damn who heard him.

Once he had exhausted himself, he slumped forward with his head in his hands and just breathed. He sat like that for a while, waiting for his muscles to uncoil and the war in his head to stop raging out of control. But for all that he had tried to purge from his system, he was no better off.

The sound of creaking wood drew his attention, and he snapped his head in the direction of the steps leading up from the doorway to find Kerrigan wringing her hands. She bowed her head the moment his gaze met hers, unable to look him in the eye. For the first time since they had met, he didn’t want her to. The sight of those startling baby blues always disarmed him, and he wasn’t ready to fall at her mercy just yet.