Casey's Warriors (Bondmates) (3 page)

“I’ve got gas in my trunk,” she said quickly, and Paige added, “I have food and medicine.”

Casey’s dad gave Paige a pleased smile that made the other girl light up. He looked at Casey. “Smart to stop for gas.”

“Roxy told me to,” she said in a low voice, wincing when her mother made a pained sound while her father audibly swallowed.

Gathering himself, he stood taller and lifted his chin in a defiant gesture that Casey could remember Roxy doing. “Well, we’re not doing any good standing out here, and I don’t know about you, but I’d feel better if we got off the street.”

Neighbors were coming out of their homes here and there, yelling information to each other. More than one person yelled thanks to Casey’s parents for their warning, and her father gave them a quick pep talk about keeping their family safe and coming over if they needed a place to stay.

He gave Paige a hug. “You
are
staying with us, understood? You will always have a room at our home, whenever you need it.”

Paige nodded, and for once, didn’t give any protests about not wanting to be a burden. “Okay.”

Chapter Two

Sixteen hours later, Casey stared at the unsteady picture on the television, trying to absorb as much information as she could during one of the brief periods when they had power. A fire crackled in the marble-framed fireplace and her dad snored lightly on the couch. Her mother occasionally glared at his sleeping form when his snores drowned out the newscaster speaking with a never-ending parade of experts who didn’t have a fucking clue. Paige was beside Casey on the oriental rug next to the couch, both of them lying on their backs against huge floor pillows and covered up with blankets. Thank goodness it was springtime and not the dead of winter, or they would have been in some serious trouble with the cold.

The newscaster, a pretty middle-aged woman with unstyled light brown hair and nowhere near the usual amount of makeup, visibly gathered herself. Out of all the talking heads on TV right now Casey and Paige agreed that she was the only one who hadn’t given into hysterics. A few hours ago, they’d been watching one of the well-known night anchors until he’d taken a bottle of whisky from beneath his desk and began doing shots in between each clip. He’d apparently been hustled off camera during a commercial, and the weatherman took over as lead anchor.

After swallowing hard, the female news anchor said, “Though we don’t have any confirmed data at the moment due to the nature of the event, it is estimated that over two thousand planes in the United States alone went down, with an unconfirmed death toll of approximately just under two hundred and ten thousand passengers and as yet unknown numbers of dead and injured on the ground at the crash sites when the burst of intense magnetic radiation came through the atmosphere and disrupted their electrical systems. Some of them crashed into populated cities, causing more havoc as the local fire departments struggled to get to the scene, blocked by people trying to flee the city.”

Casey’s mother let out a soft sound of dismay. “God bless the innocent and keep them safe.”

“With our satellite system down,” the anchor continued, “we are having to rely on old fashioned reporting. This video that we just got into the studio is graphic and unsuitable for children. I cannot emphasize enough that this is not for the eyes of our more sensitive viewers. Please have them leave the room now.”

Both Casey and Paige sat up as the newscaster stared into the camera with tear-filled eyes.

A moment later the anchor was replaced by a scene that Casey had trouble understanding at first. It appeared to be the inside of a church with hundreds and hundreds of people slumped over in the pews—men, women, children, all dressed in their Sunday best. As the camera swept over the congregation Casey realized that she was looking at dead bodies, not people. Paige must have figured it out at the same time because she gasped and reached out blindly, gripping Casey’s hand as the anchor explained that this was the scene of a mass suicide among a fundamental sect of Christians who believed it was Armageddon. The anchor mentioned that scenes like this were playing out all over the world and she begged those watching to not let their fear overwhelm them, that while the situation was confusing and they were facing an unknown and unprecedented event, that there was absolutely no reason to believe that it was the end of the world.

The screen abruptly went blank and Casey blinked, wondering if they’d lost power again during the rolling black outs that had been instituted to conserve energy. The government had been able to somewhat predict when the event was going to happen due to the disruption of their deep space exploratory satellites that detected the initial formation of the disturbance. Roughly two hours after the first small waves had been detected, a massive eruption of magnetic radiation had hurtled through space. Earth would have been fried, but by the grace of god her tiny little planet had been on the other side of the sun, which absorbed a great deal of the impact. Only minor damage was done to the electrical systems and soon things would be running like normal, or at least the government said it would.

Noticing that the light beside the couch where her dad snored was still on, Casey looked over to find her mother setting down the remote control with a grim look.

“Why did you turn it off?” Casey said, her voice coming out rough with lack of use.

“Because,” her mother said standing, “we’ve been sitting here watching the idiot box for far too long without learning much of anything. It’s four in the morning, Casey. The sun will be up soon and we’ll get a better grasp of what’s going on then. You two girls need to sleep and I’ll feel better knowing you’re in the same room just in case…well, just in case. I can set up beds down here for you, or you can both bunk down in Casey’s room if you like, but you are going to bed.”

“But what if something happens while we’re sleeping?”

“Then I’ll wake you up. I would prefer it if you slept together tonight like you did when you were little. It would do my heart good to know my girls are in the same place.” She gave a weary sigh and helped Casey and Paige stand up. Pins and needles prickled Casey’s feet and she shifted while watching her mother. “Girls, we can stand around for the next twenty years asking ‘what if’. While our imagination is one of our greatest gifts, it also gets us into trouble sometimes if we don’t reel it back in. I don’t know what the future holds, but I refuse to believe that this is the end. Now, the only thing I do know for sure is that if you don’t get some sleep you’ll get sick. So, off to bed with you.”

Casey and Paige exchanged a look, then shrugged. Part of Casey wanted to protest that they were both almost twenty-one and they weren’t kids to be sent to bed, but her mother was right and she felt beat up from the inside out. Other than scrounging up food and using the bathroom neither of them had moved from the living room. While Paige yawned and stretched, Casey grabbed her mom’s hand.

“You sure you don’t need me to stay up with you?”

The lines around her mom’s eyes deepened as she smiled. “And do what?”

“I don’t know. I mean there are all those riots going on and stuff.”

“That’s happening in the big cities. You saw Mr. Hadley earlier with his posse, and Officer Jones and Officer Douglas, they’re patrolling our neighborhood. After 9/11 a lot of communities started taking their disaster preparation seriously and have plans in place for how to deal with situations like this. Well, maybe not exactly like this, but you get my point. Don’t worry, the National Guard is already restoring order in the big US cities where the real danger....” Her mother swallowed hard and looked away for a moment, no doubt thinking about Roxy in the middle of all that peril down in Detroit and its surrounding, heavily populated suburbs.

“She’s fine, Mom,” Casey said.

Paige nodded then said in her gentle voice, “Roxy is the toughest person I know, man or woman. All she has to do is glare at a looter and they would not only return what they stole, they’d clean up the mess they made as well.”

“I know you girls are right, I just worry.” She briskly clapped her hands, startling Casey’s father mid-snore. “Now, enough dilly-dallying. Off to bed with you. The world is going to keep right on spinning through this, and no matter what tomorrow brings you’ll face it better after some shut-eye.”

They said goodnight and Casey went up the stairs, pausing for a moment at the top step to look back into the living room; her father was now awake and talking quietly with her mom before placing a gentle kiss on her mother’s lips. She followed Paige into the bedroom where Paige had spent the night at least three times a week when they were kids, and took a moment to brush her teeth before flopping into bed. Paige appeared from her room across the hall a few minutes later, wearing a clean pair of pajamas. Casey wondered if she should do the same, but her bed felt so safe and comfortable. This house had been built by her great-great grandfather and she’d lived here her whole life. This was home.

Paige slid beneath the covers of Casey’s queen sized bed then whispered, “Night, Casey.”

Glad that her friend didn’t want to talk about ‘The Event’, as Casey was beginning to think of it, she turned on her side and pulled the covers up tight.

As she drifted off to sleep the last part of T.S. Eliot’s poem kept repeating in her head.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

****

Casey stood beneath a stormy sky at the edge of a massive cliff of dark stone, looking out over a gray desert. Her black dress fluttered around her in the faint breeze; the only spot of color surrounding her was her hair and skin. The air tasted dusty against her tongue, and as she looked down into the sand, it shifted to form words that she couldn’t quite read. A strange apathy filled her and she continued to stare at the sand, the words coming so fast they looked like meaningless squiggles all writhing together until it was as if she was looking into a pit filled with snakes squirming together in a big ball.

The desolation of this place made her soul shrink and goose bumps rise up along her skin. This was an alien world, somewhere she had no place being, a land where nothing lived on the surface. But beneath, down deep in the sand, she sensed a malevolent presence. Her mind urged her body to step back from the ledge, but her feet remained stuck to the stone like she was merely an observer in her dream. The sand moved faster now, the obscene shapes that defied logic tearing at her mind, creating pain like being stabbed in the spine.

A little whimper escaped her as tears fell down her cheeks and she prayed to God to rescue her from this horror.

The sand below began to flow upwards like a bowl filling in reverse, and she knew if that sand touched her she would die. Before it reached her, a warm wind began to blow from behind her, pushing the sand away as if it had no more weight than talcum powder. The breeze brought the scent of green things, of life, joy, and happiness. Control of her body suddenly returned to her and she managed to turn around, to be greeted by the sight of two of the most amazing men she’d ever seen.

Both wore a pair of black pants that reminded her of something a martial artist would wear, and their long, beautiful hair was loose around them.

The man on the left had silver hair that had an almost metallic sheen, silky and falling to his mid back. The deep bronze tone of his skin also shone like burnished metal, and when she looked up into his bright blue eyes her heart swelled with a sense of…completion, of finally finding something she didn’t know she’d been looking for. His features were solid, almost aristocratic. There was an aura of control and power around him, an intangible sense of command combined with Alpha male dominance. In an effort to free herself from his intense gaze, she looked down, only to be distracted by the sectioned ridges of his abdominal muscles. He had the faintest trail of platinum blond hair leading down from below his naval, drawing her gaze down the sweet V-shape of his groin and ending on his very, very thick erection pressing against his pants.

Casey drew in a startled gasp.
Oh, fucking my
.

Movement came from the right and her attention turned to a man with amazing long, blood-red hair streaked with thick highlights of honey blond. It reached almost to his waist, and she bit her lower lip as she examined his stockier frame, her fingers twitching with the need to touch him, taste him, find out if his chest was really as firm as it looked, or if she would break her teeth biting the chorded side of his neck. There was a faint pelt of red hair on his chest and she had an overwhelming urge to lick him. He had fuller lips than the silver-haired man, but the rest of his features were rougher from his prominent nose to his heavy brow. Masculinity poured off of him and when she met his glowing green eyes, a full-body shiver raced over her as her nipples hardened so quickly the sensation almost stung.

For a long moment, they all stood frozen, studying each other before the men took a step closer to her almost as one. Startled, because these guys looked like football players on dinosaur-strength steroids, she took a step back only to find her heel meeting empty air. A scream escaped her as she almost fell off the cliff, reaching out blindly to be grasped by two pairs of very large, rough hands that pulled her back to safety. Pressed between them, inhaling their combined scent, her mind turned off and her body turned on. Her skin abruptly sensitized, and when the red-haired man skimmed his hands over her throat, saying something in a language she didn’t understand, all she could do was sigh in delight. With the blond at her back she studied the other man, the look of arousal on his face as he stared down at her cleavage making her feel unexpectedly bold and powerful. This wasn’t some dumb college guy still figuring out how to be a man; this male specimen before her was in his prime and it showed.