Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7) (40 page)

“Oh, Logan.” I wrap my arms around his neck, sniffing back the tears. Logan and I rock slow and steady to the beating of our hearts, right here in the eternal city. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” Tears roll down my cheeks.

“It’s OK.” Logan warms my back with his hands. It’s typical Logan to comfort me when he was the one who lived through the harrowing trauma. “Your mom was very sweet. She said she knew who I was, that there was much hope for me. She said I was chosen to live out another life, one that would cost me my own, but I needed to leave that life to come to this one.”

“I wish you were born here to begin with.” Leave it to good old Candy to take the hard road to get where she’s going. And why drag Gage into this? Why dangle me in front of Marshall like some matrimonial prize? God—I bet she’s in bed with Delphinius and perhaps in more ways than one. “I don’t see why she couldn’t have arranged a different time and place for you to begin with.”

“I asked the same thing. She said I needed my genetic code, that it was worth more than gold.”

“What did she say?” I pull back and examine him.

“She said my genetic code was worth more than gold.”

“That’s sort of what my father told me in this weird vision or dream I had when we first fell from the stone. He said for me to write it down—repeat it to myself.”

“Really?” He studies me a moment. I can see the thoughts shifting in his mind like a landslide, the movement of something big coming up from underneath. “This means something, Skyla.”

“What else did she say?”

“When I knew her back in L.A., she came every day. She listened and spoke with me. I had very few friends and no family out there, so it was a welcome reprieve from the loneliness. I was in pain, and she touched me—she healed my affliction.”

I wonder if I was an infant at that time? Knowing my mother, she could have just as easily morphed to Earth and pretended to be an intern. Her ulterior motives know no bounds.

“I thought the past didn’t change.” I pull my eyes along Logan’s precious face. I wish this moment would stretch out forever, but I can feel it closing in on us, coming to an end like a rubber band ready to retract. “But it changed for you.”

“Your mother changed it,” he says, swallowing his excitement. “She said I made an impression on her and that she wouldn’t let me go to waste, that I wouldn’t have to worry about being lonely again.” Logan holds my eyes with a heavy gaze. “She said her daughter needed me. That we were meant to be together right from the beginning, but we were on different paths.”

“That’s me.” I breathe the words like a dream.

“She said our paths would converge, then disperse for a short time.” His expression dims. The light in his soul goes out completely before starting in on an incandescent flicker. “Then we would back. We would find our way together again.” His lips bloom into a smile. “She said our love would be strong, Skyla—that we had a spiritual covenant.”

I take in a breath and blink back fresh tears, this time they were all for Gage. A slow boiling anger stirs in me.

“Did she tell you why she shoved another perfectly good Oliver in my direction?” I want to strangle her for breaking my heart, for breaking Gage’s heart—for toying with us like we were kittens. It makes me want to claw out her perfect, sparkling eyes.

“It’s OK, Skyla.” Logan shakes his head. His brows crease as the world starts to wobble like a stiff piece of plastic, bending and flexing violently in the breeze. “Believe me—there is a time for us. And we will love deeply.”

The world snaps into darkness.

Logan and I appear back at the Falls of Virtue in a pool of illuminated water.

“Logan!” I pull him in and hold on tight. I have just as many questions as I do when we started, only now, I’m afraid to ask them. Every good feeling has washed away and the stale air of Paragon infiltrates my marrow with a destitute misery.

“I love you, Skyla Messenger,” Logan whispers, brushing his lips against my ear like painting a picture. “It will all work out in the end. I promise.”

“I love you, too,” I say and wonder what he really means by “the end.”

Thank you for reading
TOXIC Part One
(Celestra Series Book 7). If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or your point of purchase. Look for
TOXIC Part Two
, (Celestra Series Book 7) coming SOON!

The Following is an extended preview of Addison Moore’s new series:

Ephemeral (The Countenance)

Teaser: Ephemeral

The Countenance Book 1

Ephemeral

The Countenance Book 1

by Addison Moore

Copyright © 2012 by Addison Moore

addisonmoorewrites.blogspot.com

Cover by Addison Moore Publishing

Interior art by Regina Wamba

Editors: Amy Eye, Sarah Oaklief

This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.

For my husband and children.

You inspire me every day.

Preface

I used to believe in things, in people, in places, and names—concrete forms of life that end at some point in the unknowable future. I used to believe memories were infallible—that they could never collapse around you like a house of cards or burn to cinders before ever touching the ground.

People vanish all the time. Other people. You hear about it on the news, see their smiling faces staring back at you on milk cartons—their pictures plastered around town like wanted posters. But it was a world within a world, and you innately knew this could never really happen.

I used to believe in death. I used to believe once they put you in that box and tucked you away for one very long night, it was finished. The sunlight, fresh air, a warm embrace, they would never be yours again. It was the final vanishing act—your curtain pulled down and covering your casket. That was the day it would all start anew. Staring into the face of God, awaiting your final judgment.

But I was wrong about everything.

I had my name, my life, and my eternal judgment revoked in one passing hour at the hands of madmen who share my bloodlines.

They took everything but my memory. They tried and failed, and now I’m nothing more than a liability—a spark in a bed of dried timber, waiting to unleash an inferno. I don’t know how long I can go before they stop me or if they even care.

I used to believe so easily, and now I strain the most insignificant details from each passing day as if they were poison.

I know one solid truth. Everything about this new world is a lie.

I’m going to infiltrate their ranks—dismantle their kingdom—take them down until they all vanish, evaporate like smoke from the planet. I plan to erase any memory of them as if they had never happened.

Or I’ll die trying.

And I just might. 

1

In Memory of Me

In the grand scheme of things, you’ll be dead a lot longer than you’ll ever be alive.

I marinate in that truth, baste in the beauty of its wisdom while peering out at the dull emerald world. I fumble through dense woods with roots that race across the forest floor like wild, petrified snakes. Wisps of lamp-lit fog twist throughout the narrow trails as gnarled branches coil around the evergreens.

Something stirs from behind, disrupts the silence with the heavy crush of leaves. I jump—startled, as though waking from a very bad dream. My chest thumps in rhythm to the pounding in my head.

“Hello?” I call out.

I try to remember how I got here. The last solid memory I have is driving to my boyfriend Tucker’s house to rip him a new one for sleeping with Megan Bartlett, a girl I know from volleyball. I was distracted with rage, the light turned green, and I never saw the other car coming. Then the crash—I remember kissing the windshield as I bristled through it at a horrific velocity.

A groan emits from the branches—more rattling.

My feet crush over a bed of dried maple leaves, filling in the haunting void of silence.

A hard thud lands square behind me, and I turn slow on my heels.

It would have been understandable to see a deer, a bear, or even another human being. But this…

A whimper gets caught in my throat and drowns out the idea of a scream. My heart seizes and I freeze.

It’s a man—a thing, his grey skin decomposed beyond recognition, exposing dried muscle over bone, one eye missing, teeth all but gone.

It staggers forward, slashing the air with a violent swing.

I start in on a full-blown sprint, trip over an errant branch and land hard on my chest.

It comes at me—falls on its knees beside me omitting a sharp putrid stench. I let out a gurgled cry—twist and claw, scampering to my feet.

Its crooked fingers tear my sweater, easy as shredding paper.

I bolt deeper into the thicket. The forest gyrates, turns into a viridian kaleidoscope as I fumble through a dizzying maze of branches.

Loud guttural moans vibrate throughout the woods. I can feel its footsteps seconds behind. The forest darkens. The fog presses in and coats my throat with its oily haze.

Panic enlivens me. Adrenaline courses through my veins creating a heartbeat in my ears.

None of this is real—this is hell—a trapdoor within a nightmare.

My breathing quickens and my head starts to spin as I navigate the spindles, the heavily shadowed woods.

My mother once said most people are prone to run through this world blind. I remember her words and the soft mannerism in which she spoke them as I stumble from branch to branch, ripping a hole in my jeans, and losing my jacket on the offshoot of a pine.

The creature gains speed, touches me. It grazes over my hair with its necrotic fingertips. I race blindly through the woods, pushing past the pain searing through my skull. My foot catches on a root and I crash to the ground with finality.

I glance back, fully expecting to find the decaying body, the stench of death, but instead I see a boy my age—a look of surprise ripe on his face. He pulls me to safety behind the trunk of a pine and then lunges at the monster. He plucks a knife from his back pocket and wrestles the decrepit beast as it latches onto his face.

I pick up a loose branch and give a hard jab at the creature’s groin. It gives a soft gurgle as if laughing at my efforts.

A rock the size of a football catches my eye. I hoist it off the ground and lob it at the tangle of flesh rolling around in front of me.

It hits the boy on the side of the head, and he lets out an agonizing groan.

Shit!

He flips the creature and lands it hard on its back. Its face holds a lavender hue, blue lips, unnatural bumps and lesions over its cheek and decomposed forehead.

The boy pummels its malformed face. He digs his knife into the eye of the beast, over and over until it ceases to writhe beneath him.