Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel (34 page)

I moved to pull away from him again. Expecting for him to look at me in disgust after what I’d just told him and to respond sensibly when I pulled away. The stupid, stupid idiot didn’t. His hold around me held even firmer than before. He pulled me closer instead of pushing me away. Tucking me into the heat of his body. “Chase—,”

A finger placed over my lips stopped them from moving. “Now it’s my turn to talk and it’s your turn to be quiet and listen.”

“Ch-“

“Alex, I will duck tape your mouth if I have to but you
will
hear me out.” His voice dipped to a deadly low and threatening growl.
 

The temperature in the room became several degrees hotter and a faint bluish white glow began to form around his outline. I thought back to what I’d witnessed in the alley with the Brethren and froze out of sheer, primal instinct.

“I’m not letting you push me away like you’ve been trying to since the moment I told you I would leave it up to you to decide if we explored the chemistry between us and you chose the option I couldn’t accept. Then I didn’t let you for arrogant and selfish reasons and now the reasons I refuse to let you are still selfish but they don’t have a damn thing to do with my ego and they have everything to do with how I feel about you and what I know you feel for me too. I empathize with your parents’ deaths and your friends’ too, you know from what I told you earlier that I do, but shit happens. Sometimes it’s your fault and sometimes it’s someone else’s fault and sometimes it’s a little bit of both, but regardless of who is at fault shit will always happen and all you can do is pick up the pieces and move on. Let it make you stronger and learn from it so you don’t make the same kind of mistakes or choices the next time around. I read the prophecy just like you did and I’m not dismissing your gut feeling about the fifth seal and that our fates might end up being intertwined. If you stabbing me in that alley is what broke the Fourth seal then there is only one person who put me in Atlanta and into your path.
Something
is up and I get the feeling that we are both pawns in a larger scheme we are unaware of. I might end up dead and I might not. I’d like for it to be the latter but that isn’t my primary concern.
You
are and the part of the prophecy that plainly states that you will die. I just found you and I’m not losing you in some bullshit ass war we never had a choice about being foot soldiers in. I’m scared as shit too but if I’m not running then you don’t get to either. If I can stay and figure the shit out because
I love you
then you can too because I know you feel the same way about me. I can feel it. It’s in your eyes as you look at me even now so don’t you dare lie here and try to tell me or make me think otherwise. I.Love.You. And you love me. And that’s all that fucking matters right now. We will figure the rest of the shit that’s thrown at us out along the way.”

“I-“

“You what Alex?” Chase growled at me, daring me to say something contradictory to his claim.
 

I tried to. I wanted to. I
should have.
But I couldn’t lie to myself and moreover I couldn’t lie to him. I pushed at his chest but he wouldn’t budge. “I love you too! You’re right. Is that what you want to hear you idiot? Or do you want to hear that try as I might to push you away for your own fucking good because I know how this ends I can’t. It’s beyond what I possess the strength or the capacity to successfully do because for the first time
ever
you make me feel like I’m not just able to keep my head above water but like I’m floating instead of drowning. You make me more thank okay or able to deal with the shit that life has thrown at me, that I’ve thrown at me, you make me
happy
. But
from love will come death
Chase. Is that what you want? For me to literally love you to death!”
 

My cheeks were stained with tears by the time I finished but warm lips brushed against one and then the other kissing them away. Then Chase kissed me on the bridge of my nose before moving softly on to my lips.
 

“No, Alex. I just want you to love me and stop trying to push me away. When my little brother died and then my dad disappeared this
darkness
took root inside of me that was never before there. Over the years I have learned to keep it leashed, but it has never left me. You said I’m one of your spots of brightness but you are my singular spot. You are the only thing ever to make it not feel like it is so much a part of me…to make me not feel like it is tangled up in my very soul. I don’t give a damn if loving you results in my death because to be honest I was never really living before. I’ve been
existing
, and it hasn’t necessarily been a positive one. The possibility of having a few days, or weeks, or months, or maybe years with you is worth more to me than the possibility of existing a lifetime without you. You’re right we will never be normal and neither will our relationship, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t evolving into something extraordinary. And I am willing to risk whatever I have to for it. But I am telling you that I will not die. An Archangel notoriously referred to throughout history as
The Archangel
didn’t go through the trouble of creating me just to have me die twenty years after the fact. Ive always known that I am a piece of his chessboard. Regardless of what his end game is, he alone makes me confident that I won’t. I know him well enough to know that he is a cunning, ruthless, calculating bastard and he created us Chosen Ones for a purpose. There is no way in all of hell or heaven that he will let us die before we serve it. And we haven’t because if that were the case he would have killed me himself for my insubordination a long time ago. So don’t pull away from me Alex out of some sweet and well intentioned but unnecessary attempt to protect my life okay? Even if the Archangel wasn’t in the picture, I am more than capable of handling myself. Besides if you do, I’ll only reach out and pull you closer.”

 
To prove he meant what he said Chase rolled his body on top of mine and completely sealed whatever space was left between us. As he nuzzled the side of my neck, dragging his nose and mouth along the length of it and inhaling deeply I responded “okay,” because really it was the only thing I wanted to say. Perhaps I was more selfish than I gave myself credit for because I was irrevocably, unequivocally, unabashedly in love with him and try as I might I kept finding it impossible to talk myself into giving him up. It was why it was so easy for him to talk me out of pulling away every time I tried to.

Any other words I would have said were stolen away with a kiss and then we didn’t talk anymore for the remainder of the night. He reiterated every thing he’d said to me through his actions, through the tender and all-consuming way he kissed me and held me and moved his body within mine.

In the morning we turned the keys to the speed boat in, grabbed a quick breakfast and headed back to the city. The fact that as we passed the suburbs that lined the Northeast stretch of I-85 we seemed to be one of the few cars on the road should have been the first clue. It was an early Sunday afternoon but every freeway in Atlanta was always at least moderately busy, regardless of the day of the week or the time.
 

As we passed the Claremont exit a large sign overhead furiously blinked at us in large red capital letters. It read: EMERGENCY ALERT! PROCEED INTO THE CITY WITH EXTREME CAUTION.
 

“Did you see that sign,” I asked Chase.

 
“Yeah, I did.” He tried to keep the panic from setting into his voice same as me, but we were both failing.

“What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know. You?”

“Me either. But I have a really bad feeling it has to do with The Brethren amassing here.”

His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. “Me too.”

I dug my cell phone frantically out of my bag. It hadn’t rung the entire day yesterday or during the drive back.
 
Surely Bennett or Charissa would have called if something happened in the city. I pressed the home button and a picture of battery with an electricity bolt through it appeared.
 

“Shit! It’s dead.” I cursed out loud. I had no idea at what point it had died. “Where’s your phone?”

“It’s in my duffel but it’s been dead since I left for your apartment yesterday morning. I forgot to charge it the night before. A USB cable is in there too. It should fit your phone.”

“Go to headquarters. We need to check in and see what’s going on.” I fervently prayed that what I thought was going on was not.
 

I recalled the Brethren named Zacharias and his words at Fusion. “
Upon what is supposed to be a celebration of our escape, of our freedom, of the beginning of our reign on Earth…”
 

I plugged my phone into the car charger sticking out of the center console. The dead battery picture flashed and then after a beat the phone powered on. A cascade of notifications chimed one after another.
 
I had more than a dozen calls a piece from both Charissa and Bennett and just as many texts including one from Whitney sent three minutes before I powered the phone on.
 

Are you ok? The news just broke. All flights into or out of the city are suspended and no one can tell me when I can get fucking home to make sure you’re ok. You’re not answering the phone. CALL ME OR I’M RENTING A CAR AND DRIVING!

No! I’m ok,
I texted her quickly.
DO NOT COME HOME. STAY IN FLORIDA. I’LL SEND YOU MONEY. DON’T ARGUE. SERIOUSLY. STAY THERE. AND SAFE. CALL YOU LATER.

My phone vibrated in hands that were already shaky. I answered it then pressed the speaker button.

“What the fuck Alex?! Why has your phone been dead for the last twelve hours?” Bennett’s voice growled over the phone.

“Alex are you alright? Are you at the lake? Please tell me you’re still at the lake! Do not come home!” Charissa’s frantic voice spoke over his. My heartbeat kicked into overdrive. Charissa was
never
frantic. Something awful had definitely happened.

“Sorry Bennett I didn’t realize it had died and Charissa I’m already here. Chase and I are headed to headquarters. We’re taking the Glenwood exit now.”

Charissa’s frenzied voice was cut off when I accidentally pulled the charging cable out of the port and my phone immediately powered off. Chase cursed and the phone slipped completely from my hand when we exited the freeway and made a right onto Glenwood.

 
As we drove down the street, deeper into East Lake and towards headquarters, the scene around us looked like something straight out of an end of the world apocalypse film. Cars sat without owners abandoned in the street, most missing doors or sporting broken glass, a few not. The same was true for the businesses and homes that we passed. The majority of them had lower story windows that were blown out and doors hanging off or completely missing from hinges. And all of those that did had smears of red across their entrances and trails of blood leading to bodies that were beginning to bloat and were the source of the smell of rot that permeated the car through its vents.
 

“Oh God,” I whispered even as a part of my brain refused to acknowledge that the level of carnage I looked at was real.

When we reached headquarters I tore from the car before Chase put it in park good. There were bodies, so many bodies, too many bodies of Nephilim scattered around it. Their blood that had been spilled left the grass in the front yard no longer green. I heard Chase exit the car behind me while shouting for me to hold up. Not to go inside. We didn’t know what was beyond the threshold with the missing door. My brain registered the sense of his words but my legs refused to listen. They kept moving past the doorway, into the house, past more bodies in the foyer and up the stairs to the second landing. To Bennett and Charissa and Ari and Cole. Charissa collided with me as I reached the last step.
 

“Oh, thank God you’re okay,” she breathed heavily as she pulled me into her. “When you weren’t answering your phone at first I didn’t know what to think. You were right about your warning but we didn’t know this would happen. We expected the Brethren to operate similar to the Daemons. Lay low, orchestrate covert attacks so as not to expose themselves to the larger public. Last night they proved that a gross misassumption. Without warning a group of them stormed headquarters while the rest of them wreaked havoc on the streets around it. The city sent in
 
police force after police force and none of them ever stood a chance. Even though East Lake is the only area they attacked, the whole city has been declared to be in a state of emergency. At about four a.m. they stopped the assaults and hijacked the CNN center. The Brethren revealed their presence and what they are to the nation and said they will start with Atlanta first. Each night a different neighborhood will drown in blood and once they’ve laid waste to Atlanta they will move on to other major cities. They told the entire fucking world that the time of The Brethren has come and hell will reign indefinitely on Earth. The public doesn’t know what to call it so it’s being called terrorism. The President addressed the nation an hour after that and is sending in militias from all five military branches. He assured the public that what The Brethren claim is a hoax and they are simply terrorists trying to induce mass panic. The world is going to be in for a rude awakening when they realize those troops being sent won’t do a damn thing against The Brethren and that what they claim is not a hoax.” A brittle laugh escaped her that told me she was barely keeping it together.

“How many died?” Chase asked quietly from beside me.

“We lost nearly a third.” Charissa’s shoulders slumped as she said the words, like she’d personally assumed responsibility for the burden and the dozens of lives lost would forever weigh on her conscious.
 

“Has Bennett contacted the other Sect leaders?”