The Seer's Lover (The Seven Archangels Series) (27 page)

Only Lucas and the priest attended the short graveside service where the priest sprinkled holy water over the casket and said a prayer. Lucas told the priest his father was an atheist so it sounded legit. After the casket was lowered into the ground, he threw a yellow rose into the freshly dug grave. Even now, he remembered the smell of the newly cut grass and rich soil.

The dozen yellow roses he brought with him today were from the same florist he’d stopped at all those years ago. The year of her death was filled in now; he traced it with his fingers, then made the sign of the cross before placing the roses below the dates of his mother’s too short life:
Elizabeth Rojas: Beloved wife and mother.

He picked up one of the roses and inhaled its aroma, sweet and dewy from the light rain. “Mom,” he began, fearing his voice would crack. “Dad’s with you now, huh? I, uh…I shouldn’t have left him here alone. He was sick for you, and I was sick of our life. I’d give anything to have you both back, but the life you lived, that we all lived…it’s so hard. It’s terrible to see what others can’t. I want to continue the fight, but I don’t know if I’m strong enough. I love you, Mom.” He looked up to the sky. “I love you, Dad. I don’t want to say good bye. I miss you both so much, and it hurts so bad. I want to be a little boy again, my only worry being to find enough worms to use as bait for Dad and I to fish with. Too early, I had more burdens than a child should have to bear.”

“Amen to that,” Carmen agreed, and Lucas glanced up to see tears streaming down her cheeks. She squeezed his shoulder.

“I’m catching the next plane back to Costa Rica. Come with me?” She wrapped her coat more tightly around herself.

“No. I need to see Cali.” Lucas felt the cold breeze drying the salty tears on his own face. Even with Carmen beside him, Lucas felt utterly alone and numb. Then Cali’s smile exploded in his memory and gave him the one thing he needed…hope.

He looked back to the gravestone. “Mom, when I was little, I remember you used to repeat the same prayer every night. I loved it. The prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. I think it went…

“‘Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Oh, Divine Master, may I not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; or to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
’”

Lucas rose and let his tears cloud his vision. Carmen held his hand and leaned her head on his arm as they walked away.

Chapter 26

C
alise’s apartment

Wauwatosa, Wisconsin

She blinked. “Shane. From college, Shane?” She hadn’t seen or heard from this man in so long. He looked like crap.

“One and the same, babe. I’m sorry I scared you, but I had to make sure we were alone. If that
seer
had been here, I would have—”

“Would have what? How do know about Lucas and what the hell is up with your eyes?”

She took a tentative step forward but he shrank away from her.

“He
infected
you?” his voice was poisonous. “What do you see?”

“Your eyes…they’re not like an angel’s or a demon’s…what are you?”

Shane hesitated as if weighing the decision what to say. “I am a
transitor—
stuck in between being an angel and a demon. When you knew me in college, I was an angel.” He fumbled with a button on the front of his shirt.

An angel?

Stomach turning, she clenched her eyes shut and pulled out the Shane of her memories. “I can see you now. You
were
beautiful, Shane.” His name rolled off her tongue as it had so many times in the past. Emotions she had long since forgotten rose to the surface. “You fell? Why? Did I do this to you?”

Guilt washed over her. Her mother said angels shouldn’t love humans. In college, Ellen warned her not to break up with Shane. Calise wanted to go to him and comfort him,
be
whatever it was he needed her to be to make him whole again.

If I did this to him, I can make it right. I can save him.

Or was it already too late?

In college, they couldn’t stand to be apart from each other; they’d lie around and hold each other—she never wanted him to let her go. When she was under his spell…

He edged a bit closer. “I don’t want to blame you, Calise. It’s my fault that I fell in love with you—that I’m still in love with you. Don’t deny that there was a bond between us then—that’s still between us. Can’t you feel it?” He put his hand on her cheek.

His touch used to send ripples of heat through her. Now, he was like a damp sponge and smelled musty and stale. She was careful not to startle him as she gently separated them. “That was a long time ago. Why are you here?”

His brows wrinkled and he set his jaw grimly. “Nara. That’s why I’m here. To warn you. Let me help you, Calise. Nara’s a demon. She hunts and kills seers like your friend, Lucas. You need to stay away from him. You’re in danger.”

She shook her head and sighed. “Yeah, I keep hearing that a lot lately. But I can’t stay away from him. What could someone have said or done to keep us apart in college? Remember how we were?”

Were.

His shoulders slumped and his face darkened. Trembling, he said, “Not a day goes by that I don’t still think about you. The only thing that kept me away from you, was
you
.”

Her cheeks burned. “Me? Shane, you were the
angel.
I’m just human. Of course I thought I loved you. You were overwhelmingly perfect. I couldn’t compete with your love, and you knew it. You weren’t supposed to fall in love with me. I know about the rules now. But I’m sorry—you tricked me. How…why did you fall?”

“I fell because of my love for you—you broke my heart. I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was after you left me. But you can save me, Calise.” He held her by the shoulders. “You can bring me back. Come with me now. I can help you. Just tell me where the
seer
is, and I’ll take care of everything.”

Her mind snapped back into focus and she wiggled her shoulders free from his grip. “What do you want with Lucas?”

“Calise, I…” He reached for her, arms outstretched.

“I’m not so sure I need, let alone
want
your help.
Leave
. Lucas will be here any time now, and he hasn’t done anything wrong. He helps cleanse the world of evil, and it seems to me you’re aligning with it.”

His trembling got worse, and anger seemed to bubble from his being. “Lucas knows all about us and our past. He knows everything. He knows in the end, you’ll need me to protect you from Nara. Our love is still there. We can make it work, like your parents did.”

He knows about my parents—and Ellen!
“If you want to help me, if you still love me, get Nara off Lucas’s back. He and I are going to be a family.”

Instantly, he was so close to her that their noses were almost touching and his hand was on her throat. Her heart pounded and Shane, the man she once loved, now scared her to death.

“I can hear it,” he whispered hoarsely. “
A second heartbeat inside you!
You are having that
seer’s
child?” Shane screamed. “You could have had e
verything
with me, and this is what you choose?”

He released his hold on her neck and threw his hands up in the air.

She coughed, massaging her neck. “Shane, what’s happened to you? How can I help you?” Her mind and body told her not to touch him because he was a time bomb. But in her heart, she felt pity. Tentatively, she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him, hoping in some way to calm him. His temper was so volatile that instead of being the man she used to rely on, this was a man who terrified her.

He melted into her arms. His tensed muscles relaxed into her body. “Remember the first time we met?”

How could she forget?

It was Calise’s first college frat party, and she was ready. As a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she was well aware that Halloween on campus was legendary. She’d heard directly from her brother Dean, an alum, that anything could and did happen on this sacred collegiate holiday. Anecdotes from her brother included underage students strutting up and down State Street with cans of beer while openly taunting police, students high on mushrooms hanging from trees thinking they were on mountaintops, and couples fornicating in alleys with voyeurs galore. To say that she couldn’t wait to engage in some lewd and lascivious behavior of her own was an understatement.

Ellen and Sarah, her best friends, scored an invite to a frat party where there were rumbles of a full bar and live band. Calise and Sarah dressed up as playboy bunnies complete with fishnets, fuzzy ears, and black patent leather pumps. They wanted attention. Their more respectable friend Ellen, Calise’s roommate, dressed up as an angel. Ellen’s night would be kept busy trying and failing miserably to keep the other two out of trouble.

The hot trio did not enter the party unannounced. While Calise was walking down the stairs to the basement of the frat house after a cursory view of the ornate main level, she missed a step and tumbled down half a staircase.

“Grace, thy name is Calise,” her dad had always joked.

She lay stunned on the floor, still looking, she was sure, quite fabulous. A hand reached down for her. The hand itself became the single most perfect appendage she’d ever laid her eyes on. A silver skull ring adorned the thumb and nail that looked as manicured as hers. She was rewarded with warmth that seemed to actually pulse when she reached up to grab the stranger’s outstretched arm.

Her embarrassment level rose to new heights when she realized how absolutely ridiculous she must have looked falling, so she decided to keep her head down when she stood up. She didn’t want to see a face displaying pity for her klutziness, so she chose not to even look up at her chivalrous frat boy. A whisper-soft finger ran down her cheek while she mumbled, “Thanks.” When she found the nerve to look up, the mystery man was walking away, and Calise caught a quick glimpse of a rock hard ass in tight-fitting jeans with a muscular upper body that appeared ripped and a head of long, dark hair.

The not so subtle buzzing of Ellen and Sarah behind her made her turn to face them.

“Did you see his hair?” Sarah cooed.

“What did his hand feel like?” Ellen asked with a serious face.

“Is he in the band? Where did he go? Did you see how he smiled at Cali and touched her face?” Sarah scanned the crowd in front of them and pointed.

His back was to them and his arm was draped around a girl surrounded by dazed-looking men trying to chat her up.

Ellen stiffened.

“What?” Calise wondered what had spooked her.

“
Why
would he be with
her
?” Ellen was visibly shaken.

“Who is that whore that’s stolen Calise’s knight in shining armor?” Sarah teased, trying to size up the competition.

“That’s Nara,” another girl remarked in passing. She shuddered. “She lives on my floor.”

Nara turned to look at them with a warning in her eye.

“Stay away from her tonight, girls,” Ellen whispered. “Your frat boy is making a serious mistake.”

Calise knew Ellen was right but couldn’t help thinking that she needed to save him from this woman. But it was
he
who was trying to do the saving.

Sarah was still fixated on the mystery man. “He’s so—wow.”

“Really, Sarah; and to think we haven’t even begun drinking heavily yet!” Ellen laughed. “What will men look like to you at the
end
of the night?”

Just then the band started playing, opening their set with AC/DC’s
You Shook Me All Night Long
. Calise was theirs. She loved some 80s metal. The girls pushed their way into the crowd to head bang.

She saw a flash of hair on the drums when she went to replenish their beverages during the opening riff of Guns N’ Roses’
Welcome to the Jungle.
The hair was wicked long and black with bangs covering the face. His head rocked with the music but she recognized a flash on his thumb. The silver skull ring! She froze and watched him. When the song ended, his hair settled back to earth, gracing her with a full facial frontal. He looked right at her and Calise closed her gaping mouth, mesmerized. She tingled everywhere it mattered. Every beat he played, she felt throughout her whole body.

He winked at her.

Calise was captivated. She stood there drinking shitty beer and watching his every move set after heavy metal set.

Then
she
was there—Nara.

She bumped into Calise so hard that she actually stumbled backwards and spilled her beer. Something deep inside of Calise snapped. The air around Nara seemed to radiate the energy of an impending storm.

She had a feeling of something off, something wrong. The energy from the girl made Calise want to run—to Ellen… or that hot drummer.

Even though no one believed her, Calise had felt these odd energies around certain people for years. She tried to ignore it. She’d tried to wish it away. And failed.

Calise rushed Nara from behind and gave her a hard push. “You don’t deserve him.”

“And you do, filthy human?” she snarled.

That was one of the last things Calise remembered of the male-dubbed
hot chick fight
.

The next day Ellen told her that Calise’s man of the hour, named Shane, pulled Nara off of her, and she sported the black eye and fat lip to prove it. A beautiful first impression, if she did say so herself. Calise was sure he was thinking,
When, oh when, can I see her again?

****

Calise was swooning in Shane’s arms. She felt drugged and delirious.

“I
was
wondering when I could see you again, Cal,” Shane cooed in her ear. “Remember how I saved you?”

She couldn’t stop the memory from coming. She welcomed it.

****

The next weekend the very same frat where Calise had made a spectacle of herself on Halloween hosted a dinner, and each frat boy could bring a guest. Sarah nabbed an invite with the lead singer of the band, named Topher, who asked Sarah if she could wrestle up any single friends that would come to be dates for some of the
currently unattached
boys. Ellen and Calise read that as
babysit the nerds,
but they had nothing better to do.