Lost In Time: A Fallen Novel (20 page)

It was a similar question to the one he had asked then. Kyra reached for Ryder’s hand and squeezed. “I sometimes wake in the night in a panic that it isn’t real, that Ryder won’t be there, because the thought of him not being next to me hurts so badly it takes my breath away. It can be so painful you want to die, and at the same time so wonderful if fills you to the point of bursting. Life isn’t about what I can do to change the world or what I do on a day to day basis. It’s based on the love that fills your heart and the person you share it with.” She smiled and Ryder rolled his eyes. “Love consumes you, Marcus, every fiber of your being. This may be hard to hear, but if you loved Jessica as much as you say you did, then you would never have walked away. If she had loved you equally, she would have never walked away. I mean, look at what I put up with being with Ryder,” she finally said, mimicking Ryder’s eye roll.

“Lust will take you a long way, buddy, but love with stands the true test of time. Be its own entity, a force for the two, not against you,” Ryder said with as much sincerity as Marcus had ever seen the Tracker have.

“So now what?” Marcus asked.

“Jessica or Celeste?” Kyra asked raising one eyebrow.

Marcus sighed. “Jessica was part of my past, and you’re right if I had loved her as much as I professed I would have fought for her. I gave up, and she walked away.” He wondered if Celeste would ever walk away and not look back. Just the thought hurt so badly it almost made him sick. “I have stood so long on my morals and virtue of celibacy for the sake of it. Dropping that mantel leaves me feeling freer than I ever have as a Fallen.”

Kyra smiled. “Then Celeste it is, if she can relieve you of that pain. And you still allow her to kick your ass. It has to be love.” She stood and kissed him on the cheek. “Just think about it Marcus.”

Kyra and Ryder left him there in the kitchen, and he watched the sun set, trying to come up with a plan. When he decided on a course of action, he was sure it was going to cause some rip roaring fights. But Gods willing, in the end, it would show them both they were meant for each other. Marcus had braved the gates of the Elysian Fields for Jessica, but he would break down the barriers of the Infernos and Hell for Celeste.

****

Celeste was having the most wonderful dream. She often dreamed of making love to Marcus, feeling the roll of his muscles over his back, the feel of his body pressed against hers. She grasped at the edges of her dream holding onto it for as long as possible.

“I want to make love to you at sunrise every day for eternity.”

Celeste jolted awake, as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on her and scrambled away from the man on her bed. Landing flat on her butt with a thump.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded trying to not notice how wonderful he looked his hair mussed, sleep still lingering in his eyes.

“Actually I slept here, Celeste. By the way, you sleep like the dead.” He sat up and stretched. “But…but…” she stammered. “You have a room, go sleep there.”

“I prefer to sleep here,” he said simply. Celeste wanted to hit him. She stood up and did just that, slapping him upside the head.

“Have you lost your mind?” she demanded.

Marcus shook his head. “Not that I am aware of, sweet. But keep hitting me like that my mind might not make it that long.”

“Get out,” she demanded, but part of her brain was screeching for her to get back into bed with him.

Marcus stretched again and stepped out of the bed, naked, completely and utterly naked, his erection evidence of his desire. Celeste’s mouth gaped, and she just stared, unable to look away. Marcus’s chuckle brought her out of her daze.

She pointed at his amazing erection. “Put it away,” she shrieked.

“You’re naked Celeste.” She looked down, not even realizing she had been standing there arguing with him just as naked as he was.

“You’ve lost your mind,” she said. Grabbing a blanket, she covered herself. “What happened? Why are you acting like this? What about your vow? What happened to you?” she stammered.

Marcus grabbed a pair of pants and pulled them on, zipping them up but not buttoning them. She looked at him and thought he was the sexiest man in the world. Nothing could compare to how beautiful he was. She had to look the other way or she was going to lung across the bed and lick his abs.

She kept her eyes averted as he spoke. “If you don’t want me to see you naked, then you may want to think about wearing something to bed.”

Unable to control herself, she turned to him, sarcasm foaming at her mouth. “Or you could stay in your room where you belong. That’s why they gave you a room of your own.”

Marcus smiled, such a sweet and endearing smile she melted just a little. “But your window faces the east, and I have really taken to watching the sunrise with you.”

He smiled and left the room, shutting her door behind him. Celeste just stood there, her mouth opening and closing for several minutes. He had lost his mind, that was all there was to it. Lost it completely. She stomped into the bathroom and got in the shower, convincing herself that it had been a fluke and it wouldn’t happen again. She was going to remain aloof, a bitch if she had to be. But she was going to keep him at a distance.

****

“What the hell are you wearing?” Marcus said the moment Celeste walked into the kitchen. She had on low slung jeans, barely hiding her hip bones and sexy ass, with a black wife beater t-shirt that enhanced her large chest and thin waist. She was the epitome of a wet dream for any male between the age of fifteen and a hundred and ten.

“I’m sorry. Do I need to check off my wardrobe choices with you?” she asked with such a snarky attitude it actually made Marcus smile instead of infuriate him.

“Eat your Fruit Loops.” He shoved the box at her. “In fact, eat the whole damn box of Fruit Loops.” Maybe then she wouldn’t be able to fit into those damn jeans that were mere inches from heaven on earth.

Marcus swallowed hard and shifted his position at the kitchen table. She smiled at him and poured more cereal into her bowl.

“Marcus?”

“What?” he barked at Kyra, only to feel like a complete heel for doing it. “I’m sorry Kyra, was there something you needed?”

“Yes, I need you to stop kicking me under the table.” Marcus jerked his chair back, not even realizing that he had been crossing and uncrossing his legs trying to find a comfortable position for his raging hard on, without anyone noticing.

“My brothers will be here soon,” Celeste said, sitting down next to Kyra.

“I have an idea,” she said, shoveling Fruit Loops into her mouth. “But we are going to need several of my brothers to make it work.”

“They want to take you back to the Infernos,” Marcus told her, wanting to know what her reaction would be.

“Of course they would. They think I will be safer there. I’ll change their mind,” she said with a shrug.

“Exactly how do you plan on doing that?” Marcus asked. As far as he knew the Reapers did whatever they pleased and damn the rest of the world.

Kyra rolled her eyes. “I don’t know her plan, but I do know that she is a woman, so she’ll get them to do what she wants.”

Marcus shook his head. Had he woken up in the Twilight zone? First Celeste, a Sex Demon, had thrown him out of her room. Now Kyra and Celeste were somehow communicating with some female power Marcus couldn’t begin to understand.

Ryder came in, and Marcus stood. “They’re speaking in tongues,” he said as he passed him on his way out.

“They always do. You should hear her, and Marlee go at it. Can’t understand a damn thing,” Ryder said to his back as Marcus left the kitchen and headed for his room. He needed to check his inventory. He wasn’t sure what Celeste had planned for the day, but he wanted to be prepared for anything.

****

“MARCUS!” Celeste bellowed his name from the bottom of the stairs and giggled. She had never been allowed to do anything like that in the Infernos, and she had to admit it was slightly funny. So she did it again.

Marcus appeared at the top of the stairs. “Are you done screaming like a lunatic?” he asked, his hands on his hips.

“What if I had been calling for help? You took a great deal of time to answer my summons,” Celeste said, putting her own hands on her hips.

Marcus came down the steps. Stopping, he kissed her on the nose. “Sweetheart, if you were in trouble you wouldn’t have called for me. You would have kicked ass and then laughed when I showed up late for the fight.” He took her hand as she smiled, unable to stop the warmth that spread through her at his words. “Where is everyone?”

“Dining room.”

He led them into the room, shocked to see the Trackers, Kyra, three Reapers and Aiden with his entourage. “Well, if anything, this will be an interesting meeting.”

He pulled out a chair for Celeste and sat down next to her.

“First of all, I would like to thank you all for coming to my rescue a few days ago.” Grunts and mumbles answered her welcomes. But she hadn’t expected much. They were men and didn’t do well with complements of any kind. “Second, I have a plan, something that Calliope said to me while he had me. Stuck in my brain.”

“Your brain that got so scrambled you almost died?” Victor snarled. “That brain?”

Celeste smiled at her brother and reached over the table to take his hand. “Yes, Victor, that brain. It’s also a brain that is completely healed, thanks to you.”

He jerked his hand away, but not before he squeezed her fingers quickly. “What did the bastard have to say?”

“He said he didn’t need the Touched, he felt it like a shiver in his spine each time someone Flashed from the Infernos to the mortal plane or back. He said if he was close enough he could smell the sulfur.”

“If we are going to capture him and take him to hell, or just straight out kill him with the Black Sword. We will need to confuse him, draw him out make him vulnerable,” Celeste said.

Kyra leaned forward. “I like that idea. Having the upper hand will switch this from hide and seek to a full on assault.”

Victor grunted. “What’s the plan?”

Celeste smiled. If she could get Victor on board her other brothers would follow. “We need to confuse him, Flash throughout the city. Get him running in circles and lead him back here.”

“Okay, stop right there,” Ryder said, leaning forward. “Falcon really likes this house, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want it destroyed. We can bang it up a bit, but full on destruction like what Calliope is capable of, not going to happen.”

“But that is the best part. Calliope doesn’t know we have an Element on our side, and she can protect the house. Calliope is balancing on a very thin line of sanity. We screw with that, and he is putty in our hands,” Celeste finished. Leaning back, she crossed her arms over her chest and waited for the information she had just tossed on the table to be looked at and digested.

In her head she started at fifteen and started to count down.

Fifteen

Fourteen

Thirteen

Twelve

Eleven

Ten

Nine

“It’s a sound plan,” Marcus said, leaning forward. “Cameron, get a map of the city.”

Cameron jumped up and left the room. “If we all Flash throughout the city in an exact enough pattern it will look as if we are looking for something and bringing whatever it is back here.”

Cameron came back and laid out a map of the city. “If we start on the outskirts here,” Marcus pointed to the farthest point from the house. “And grid up, we can Flash through the city. Maybe even come across the damn Touched we came for and draw Calliope out at the same time.”

“We have one small problem,” Aiden said from his seat at the head of the table.

“Vampires don’t Flash.”

“Yeah and neither do Trackers or Elements,” Cameron added.

Kyra groaned and shook her head. “But an Element with just a little help can create something that will simulate a Flash and that is all we need correct, Celeste?”

Celeste wanted to hug the woman. “Yes, that is all we need.”

“Perfect. When do we start?” Ash asked, speaking for the first time. “Let’s get this party started so we can get the hell out of here.”

“We will begin as soon as I take Celeste back to the Infernos,” Victor announced, pushing himself away from the table.

Celeste didn’t move. “I’m not going back, Victor.”

“She’s not going anywhere,” Marcus said at the same time.

Victor ignored Marcus and looked at Celeste. “It wasn’t a request.”

“I am going to finish what I started.”

Victor leaned over the table. “He won’t capture you and torture you next time. He will kill you, dismember you, and disembowel you like our brothers. I will not have that.”

Celeste loved her brother and his show of pain at the mere thought of her being hurt tugged at her heart strings, but she wasn’t giving in on this one.

“I love you too, Victor, but who else will wield the Black Sword? If any of the Reapers use it, it could turn them. If a mortal touches it, it could kill them. Some Others can handle it for a short time without causing any real damage. If Marcus used it to kill Calliope, it would turn him into a Dark Angel. I am the only one that can do this,” she explained.