Eden's Charms (37 page)

Ethan pointed to the exit. “Go with your aunt and wait for the police.”

“Not without you.”

André shook his head. “Please, baby, get away from here. I can’t lose three children today.”

“Papa?” Savanah crossed to him.

“Peanut, go, please? I can’t—”

With her father choked up and worried sick, Savanah felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. She didn’t want to make the man have a complete meltdown, but there was no way in hell she was leaving here without her family.

Devon’s struggle to get dressed with only nine…no, make that eight, seven, six fingers, left Ethan’s jaw hung open. Each time he counted down another phalange fell off his hand. Ethan picked a dagger up off the table and aimed it at him, willing him to take one more step; wanting him to.

Raven stuck her head into the room and yelled to André, “Catch.” She tossed him a crossbow.

“Are you serious, Raven? A crossbow? Are we stuck in the middle ages? I want a god-damned gun,” he yelled.

“It’s a dungeon, brother. Work with me.” Raven shrugged her shoulders.

With his index and middle finger, Lucian pointed from his eyes to the Maestros’. “You and I, now. Here.” Fangs bared, a snarling match began. Both men circled one another, neither losing site of the other as they twisted and turned in an oddly choreographed dance. With unfathomable speed and one cold, hard spin-kick to the back of his head, Lucian stumbled, face first. The Maestro straightened his stance, ready to strike again. On the ground, Lucian swung his foot hard and fast into the back of the Maestro’s legs, to bring him eyelevel to him. Both men scrambled to their feet. Beside them Ethan and Devon were on the ground in a free-for-all throwing punches, kicks and bites. Blood, clothing, fur and fingers covered the floor.

Devon’s.

Taking aim, André locked the sights on Devon and released the trigger. Hearing a whizzing noise intensify the closer it came, Devon ducked. The silver tipped arrow struck Julian’s leg. In that moment all fighting stopped and all eyes were upon Julian.

“Uncle Julian?” Savanah whispered her face contorted with pain seeing his leg impaled.

André yelled, “Grimmy?”

Madder than hell, Julian yanked the stake from his leg without batting an eye. “This insanity has to stop.” He stood to cross the room and slipped backwards hard and fast on pearls. Arms circling like a bird trying to take flight, he became snared on the razor birdcage.

A tap on his shoulder to get his attention back on him, Devon turned to meet Ethan’s fist.

“You were going to rape my fiancé.” A second blow and Devon’s jaw snapped sideways. “That’s a death warrant where I come from. You don’t touch a woman until she consents. Did you hear her say
Y-E-S?
I didn’t. Did you say yes, Pip?”

Savanah shook her head no. “That ignoramus is my cousin, Eth. Long lost cousin. Wish I’d never found him. He should have rightfully been king.”

“I still will be.” Devon spat.

“I think not,” Ethan answered. Devon became intimately aware of the phrase
out cold
with one strategically placed right hook. Ethan hoisted then strapped the unconscious man to the very table Savanah lay trapped on minutes earlier. With the flick of his wrist, he set the pendulum in motion. “Ta, Devon.”

Savanah almost had Julian untangled when the Maestro reached out and grabbed her. With his free arm, he swiped the gold challis and stuffed the treasured artifact into his pocket then fled with Savanah kicking and screaming. André and Ethan were on his heels.

The Maestro yelled, “Back off, boys, or she’s dead.”

“I so need a bath,” Savanah muttered. “Let go of me.” She stomped hard on the top of his foot and head butt him with the backside of her skull, hoping to break away. Ethan lunged for them, but fell into thin air with the Maestro’s stealth. He immediately got up and followed.

Chapter Nineteen

“Jules? Let’s go!” Lucian pointed as André, Ethan and the Maestro fought over Savanah like she was a
piñata
. He yelled a second time, “Come on, dammit. It won’t be candy that spills from her if they split her in half.”

In the blink of an eye the lot of them disappeared in thin air. Lucian tore Julian free from the barbed ball and evanesced before he could protest. They went through each floor of the establishment only to come up empty handed. Bursting through the doors like two cowboys getting tossed from a saloon, the two men landed in a parking lot crowded with vehicles. The PEON’s took up most of the space. The news crews were there too, cameras fixed and lenses dilated on Lucian’s exit from the establishment. Officers converged on the two men like dogs to bones. Lucian prayed for all he was worth the wards were no longer working and their mind-to-mind frequencies were up and working.

Jules, I’m disappearing. I’m not leaving, just disappearing.

One officer removed his glasses, cleaned the lenses, then rubbed his eyes. “Sir, are you all right? Did he bite you? Are you contagious?” He asked as he drew his gun on Julian.

“For the love of God.” Julian grabbed the revolver and jammed it up the man’s nose. “Dumb fecking twit! Count your blessings I’m in too much of a hurry to deal with yet another ass.” Hearing a thunderous commotion, Julian shoved the now crying man to the ground and headed to the shoreline at the lake where he found Savanah hysterical. She was pointing to a speedboat careening across Saratoga Lake and André was struggling to hold her back.

André tightened his grip on Savanah. “Sinclair had a blade to Savvy’s throat. Ethan charged him and took the brunt of the blade into his abdomen. The blade was pure silver.” André looked hopeless. “Sinclair shoved Savanah to the ground, picked Ethan up and fled. They’re in that boat right now. Where’s Lucian?”

A man in a blue jumpsuit, his face shielded by a helmet carrying a backpack loaded with weapons scurried passed them in haste, got down on one knee, took aim at the boat with what resembled an RPG (rocket propelled grenade) and launched the missile.

Seconds later the ground shook. A fireball of scorching heat seared across the lake and exploded with an aftermath of debris raining down on everyone.

Savanah broke free from her father and did a running dive into the murky water before the last pieces of debris hit the ground.

“Ethan!” She swam a good one hundred meters before arms grabbed her. Fighting for both her life and Ethan’s, she turned around in the water fists plowing into an officer’s nose. “Don’t touch me,” she screamed. She filled her lungs and disappeared beneath the surface, headed for the sinking wreckage.

A second pair of arms caught her but didn’t relinquish their grasp as she was reeled up. Savanah turned and even though she saw Julian, she fought.

“Get off me, Uncle. Let me go. Help me.” A wave of gasoline and oil slapped her in the face and left her gasping. The combination of fear, exhaustion and adrenaline quickly took its toll. She went under again and had trouble wading. “Please, go get him back?” she begged as tears spilled down her cheeks and mixed into the lake, vanishing, just as Ethan had.

“He’s gone, Peanut.” Julian tread water beside her and held her afloat until the police boat swung up to them. “I’m so sorry.”

Back on land, shivering and numb, Savanah watched the boat Ethan was in vanish with the same disappearing act the Titanic did. Her knees gave out, and she dropped sobbing, mad at the world. André followed. Savanah looked at her father and asked “Why Papa? Why did Ethan have to die? I don’t understand? You told me the good guy is the last man standing. Papa, he was good. I love him. He can’t be gone.” Savanah hiccupped and passed out.

A man in a dark black suit with PEON embroidered on his jacket’s lapel emerged from the restaurant carrying a woman draped over his shoulder. “I found one more,” he yelled. “Get me a paramedic. She’s still alive. She’s in rough shape. Been raped and beaten. This place has a dungeon down stairs. Some guy was secured to the table about to get sliced in half. I let him go.”

“Fuck!” André called out, “I need another stretcher. My daughter’s passed out. Her fiancé was on that boat. And the guy you unleashed was behind all of this chaos. Good job!”

The ride to the hospital sobered him. André promised Jovan her happily ever after, but instead he was bringing his daughter in as a patient because Savanah went into shock.

Approaching Jovan’s room, André heard Jovan’s laughter. Sticking his head in the door, his wife had a cup of tea in front of her. Molly slept in the bed next to her and Serina sat in the chair with her feet up on her bed, Elyza in her arms.

“How’re my babies?” André asked. He sat down beside his wife and leaned in for a soft kiss.

Serina answered, “Fine. Hopefully you won’t be seeing them for a few months. They got tied up in each other’s cords and started fighting. One thing led to another and here we are. The operation of the conjoined twins never happened. The people that have them freaked last night when someone tried to break into their hotel room. They fled with no further word of their whereabouts.”

“Serina, how did you and Luce know where to come and what was happening? We lost contact with everyone.” André glanced between his wife and Serina, suspicion plastered all over his rugged face.

Serina swallowed the guilt gurgling its way up her esophagus. Did she tell André her mother was once again inside his wife and children? At least they were in a hospital if someone got hurt! That slice of optimism was her saving grace.

“Cell phones. Everyone has them these days.”

Jovan pulled hers out from between her thighs with a little grin.

“Where are Lucian and Savanah?” Serina asked.

Hesitation in any situation is sure death. Obviously, André took a split second too long to answer.

“Out with it.” Jovan ordered through clenched teeth.

Before he was done explaining, André was wheeling Jovan down the hall to her daughter’s room.

“Oh, André, how could this happen? I scryed and saw them together. How? Why?”

“I don’t know,
Cherié
, but he gave his life for her.”

“Where’s Lucian?” Serina asked trying to keep pace with Jovan.

“He had to disappear for a bit. He’s in no danger.”

“
Bebé
, how do we help our daughter get over this?”

“Time and our love, my
Cherié
.”

****

October 10th

“Savanah! André! Serina! Julian! Jonah! Lucian!”

Sticking his head out his bedroom door at two in the morning Lucian asked, “Jovan, how come I’m always last on your list when you call people?”

“No time for funnies, imbecile. I’ve sprung a leak. Please get your dead-beat of a brother up and moving.”

Jovan waddled past Lucian in a way he was positive pregnant woman couldn’t move—unnaturally fast.

“Savanah?” Jovan stuck her head in her daughter’s room. “You awake?”

Rubbing her eyes and looking at her clock, she answered, “I am now. What is it?”

“You ready to meet your new brothers or sisters?”

Half asleep Savanah threw on a pair of flip flops and a pair of Ethan’s baggy sweatpants. She buried her hair under her Yankees cap and ran down the stairs to her parents’ room.

“Whose driving?” Savanah asked.

“I am.” Jonah answered in passing as he went to bring the car around.

Jovan skidded to a halt in front of Jonah. “Absolutely not. I can see it now. We’d get pulled over for speeding, and I’d deliver these two in the backseat.”

“’Tis only fitting dear, sweet sister. Isn’t that where they were conceived?”

She snatched the keys from his hand and gave them to Savanah.

“Don’t take it personally, Jonah.” André yawned. “How far are your contractions, my Cherié?”

“If they’re much closer there will be no need for me to get into the car and get to the hospital. Answer your question?” Jovan shoved her little overnight bag in her husband’s arms.

“I’ll get the car warmed up, Mum. Where’s Duncan and Molly?”

Julian mumbled, “Europe ring any bells? They left two weeks ago.”

****

In the car waiting for her mother and everyone else, Savanah surfed the radio for an upbeat song then twisted the button off immediately after hearing the one song that stole her heart,
Let’s get it started
. She remembered Ethan’s cockiness as he looked up to her, his green eyes so alive and so full of mischief. Just thinking of him hurt. For a brief moment her memories brought him so close, she could taste his kisses. Swiping at tears as they trailed down her face, she licked her lips, only to taste the bitter reality she was alone. Her heart ached; she was positive it would shatter soon if she didn’t get her life back, but what was left? The one and only love of her life was dead, blown to smithereens in Saratoga Lake.

“Fish food, Savvy. He’s freakin’ fish food. I’m sorry, Ethan. I love you. I never got the chance to tell you. You bastard!” She pounded her fists into the dashboard until her knuckles throbbed. “You wouldn’t let me and now you’ll never know. Oh God, just take me now.” Savanah wiped away her tears, blew her nose and put on the falsest smile she could muster when the car door opened.

“Baby, that look is all wrong on you. If you want to cry then by the gods cry. You can sit in the labor room with me, and we’ll both have a good drenching and no one will be the wiser.” Jovan pat her daughter’s hand. “Now get me to the damned hospital.”

****

All Hallows Eve

From her bedroom, her elbows propped up on the windowsill, Savanah watched the snowflakes sift down from the heavens thinking they resembled her heart; small chipped pieces of ice lost in a vast, bleak existence waiting to melt away. A freak storm.
And why not,
she thought. Everything else in her pathetic existence had turned one-hundred-eighty degrees opposite to the sublime. Savanah realized she’d missed summer and most of fall. Life had become a
dull-drag-her-ass-out-of-bed-only-if-she-had-to
existence. She got up to eat, pee, vomit every other morning and shower when she couldn’t stand the stench another second and then retreat back under the safety of her covers, hiding from reality not monsters. The monsters were easy enough to kill off. Reality scared the daylight from her. Every now and then she’d glance into her mirror and not recognize the starved, lonely woman with a blank expression staring back. Daily, she waited for any sign it was time to get back into the swing of things, but alas, no winged angel slapped her in the head and told her to get her ass back out with the living. Nothing changed. Ethan was gone and her cancer-like-loneliness spread throughout her body, killing her one little cell at a time.