Lucy's Liberation [Elk Creek 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (39 page)

Somewhere in the distance he heard Lucy scream as he crumbled to his knees.

Prentice shook his head and opened his eyes to see Boone standing over him, glowering.

“Did that jar your memory?”

“You didn’t have to do that!” Lucy shouted.

“You’ll mind what you say to me, little filly. This ain’t your concern.”

“Of course it’s my concern. You hurt him.”

“Poor little Ethan with his harem of fillies who want to protect him and take care of him and love him,” Boone chided.

Prentice licked blood from the corner of his mouth as he came to his feet, glaring at Boone. “Are you jealous?” He knew it was true before he even asked it, but also knew it was the wrong thing to say the minute the words left his mouth. It had felt good, however, to get in his own jab and even better to get the bastard’s focus off of Lucy and onto him.

His strategy worked like a charm, almost too well.

Boone hauled back a fist to hit him again.

Prentice took the fist on the chin, noticing the gun still in Boone’s other hand when Ki burst from the underbrush with a roar.

Time seemed to stop, the next few moments unfolding before Prentice in slow motion.

Lucy screamed Ki’s name.

Boone turned, aiming his gun at Ki as Ki rushed forward before suddenly stopping dead in his tracks with hands raised high above his head.

Prentice had no choice, just went on autopilot.

He threw out a stream of psychic energy, directing the full force of his anger at Boone, protective instincts flying into overdrive.

“What—” Boone gasped and crumpled to his knees, the gun dropping from his hand as he grabbed his head between his hands.

Prentice had no doubt where his strength came from right then. It wasn’t just the sex he had been having, which had never failed to augment his powers in the past. His powers were so strong now because he had been having sex with Ki and Lucy and he loved them.

Ki ran forward and grabbed the gun on his way to Lucy.

“Arrrrgh! Help…me!”

Prentice heard Boone’s strangled cries from a distance, the familiar buzz, the all-encompassing sense of incomparability, suffusing him.

This time, however, he got no joy from the feelings. He wondered now if he ever had.

He thought of Aura, how he had regretted killing her but had done it anyway. Rance had been a choice, however, he would gladly make again. Still, this wasn’t right. He needed to—

“Ethan, you’re killing him!”

Lucy’s warning broke through the fog at the same time he noticed the blood flowing from his own nose.

Prentice knew he was near that familiar point of no return.

Vengeance is not your place. Let it go.

For a moment he thought it was Brielle or Caith trying to get through to him, but it was his own voice he had heard in his head—all him.

He released his hold on Boone and collapsed to his knees as Lucy and Ki rushed to him.

He had enough energy to take Boone out, more than enough, he was sure, but after Aura, he couldn’t do it, not anymore.

“It’s okay. He can’t hurt us now. You can let him go.”

Lucy’s voice was soft as she wrapped her arms around him. She and Ki huddled close and formed a shielding circle around him that Prentice never wanted to leave.

He felt the commotion on the edge of his consciousness, however, saw Boone from the corner of his eyes as the other man drew another gun.

Prentice didn’t know from where or how, just instantly, instinctively he reacted to the threat.

He pushed Lucy behind him at the same time that he flung out another surge of energy.

A shot pierced the night with an earsplitting explosion and Prentice staggered back from the force of the bullet that entered his chest.

Lucy shrieked as he collapsed into Ki’s arms. “No! No, no, no…”

Prentice heard her cries of denial as if from a great distance and felt the blackness descending. This time his death wasn’t as painful and sudden as when that rope had broken his neck in that barn. It was a gradual loss of sensation until his entire body turned first cold then numb right before his soul floated up and away from it, from everything.

He wanted to scream in frustration at the injustice of it, but he had no voice.

Hadn’t he done everything they wanted? What had he done wrong?

“Nothing at all, Prentice.”

“Then why? Why, Brielle?”

“It’s up to you.”

“How is this up to
me
?”

“Are you going to whine about the unfairness of it all and turn a blind eye to what’s right like you always have in the past, or are you going to fight? It’s your choice, son.”

The harshness of her words brought him up short and Prentice glanced down at the scene playing before him.

He saw his body, a swath of blood growing across his shirtfront as he lay with his head in Lucy’s lap, Ki kneeling beside her, both of them in tears.

“Is that what you want your legacy to be? Do you want to be a quitter?”

“It’s not like I wanted to leave!”

“Didn’t you?”

“I thought I was finished. What more do I have to do? What more do I need to change?”

“If you have to ask, then maybe you really aren’t ready for the next step.”

“He isn’t.”

Prentice flinched at the unfamiliar, androgynous voice, the finality of the being’s words.

“Who are you?”

“Rather than tell you, why don’t I just show you?”

Prentice didn’t know if he liked the sounds of that. In fact, he was sure he didn’t like the sounds of it and before he could consider his fate any further, he felt himself being whisked away.

Within dizzying seconds of lights flashing all around him and a final sonic boom that seemed to puncture his eardrums, Prentice was delivered onto a vibrant field of grass and flowers beneath a pure azure and white sky.

It wasn’t the smoothest of landings and he wondered if the harshness of his trip had been to teach him a lesson.

“Perhaps there is hope for you yet.”

Prentice couldn’t give the proper sarcastic response he thought the being’s humor deserved. In fact, he couldn’t give any response at all. His head was still spinning from the trip. And to top things off, he helplessly stumbled to his knees and threw up. “Oh, God. I’m sorry!” All that pristine grass and those beautiful flowers—ruined.

“Don’t be. And Goddess will do.”

Even as Prentice registered the introduction, the evidence of his queasiness was already evaporating as if he had never thrown up.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he got to his feet. “Neat trick.”

“Isn’t it though?”

From the utopian surroundings and the divine company, Prentice realized he was back in familiar territory—the Summerland.

For someone who wasn’t particularly spiritual or even a good, faithful, Wiccan, he seemed to find himself in the Summerland a lot more than he would have ever imagined.

“Bad and good are relative terms. As you’re probably aware, nothing is all black or all white. Not even
your
soul, contrary to popular belief.”
Prentice glanced around, trying to find the source of the voice, wanting to see the being whom had been responsible for sending him back and taking him away from Earth.

“I am everyone you have ever met and I am no one. I am in your heart and in your soul. I always have been even when you disavowed me. You do not need to see me to know I am.”

As Goddess spoke, the truth of her words washed over him like a restorative salve, reassuring and warm, suffusing him with a long-sought sense of security.

Prentice closed his eyes, tilted back his head and aimed his face at the sun like a flower or a tree, searching for further nourishment.

“You must go back.”

The stark simplicity of the statement filled his heart with dread even though he understood the necessity.

He had left so many things undone. He still had so much to learn, so much to contribute. He owed people. He owed himself.

“Do you want to live?”

Was that a trick question?

The sound of chuckling filled the air and Prentice thought how much it reminded him of Brielle.

“Do. You. Want. To. Live, Prentice?”

He wanted to love and be loved. He wanted to make amends. The only way he could do any of those things was to go back.

“Is that your final answer?”

Now Prentice laughed. This Goddess-being was something else.

“I have to warn you, the trip back is going to be a lot rougher than the trip here. You’ve left me with some serious damage to repair.”

“If you’re referring to the bullet wound, I didn’t have much of a choice.” It was either take the bullet, or let Lucy die. The latter was unthinkable.

“I wasn’t complaining, just saying.”

“Oh.”

Goddess laughed at his stiff tone.
“You did good down there, by the way.”

“I tried.”

“That’s all I’ll ever ask of you.”

Prentice swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay. I’m ready.”

A burst of white light blinded him and Prentice steeled himself for the journey.

Right before Goddess spirited him away again, he heard her say,
“Aura, Brielle, and Caith want you to know that they are very proud of you.”

* * * *

“It’s just not fair. It’s just not…”

“I know, Lulu. I know.” Ki rubbed her back in what should have been comforting circles, but Lucy wasn’t comforted at all.

She had let him down.

She wasn’t supposed to let him die. She had promised him that she wouldn’t let Boone kill him and when the chips had been down, she had failed him. She had failed the only man who had ever cared enough about her to save her from Rance. Even when he hadn’t been all “good,” Prentice had always been good to her.

Lucy looked down at her hands, blood-soaked from when she had ripped open Ethan’s shirt and tried to staunch the flow of his life’s fluid, desperately pressing against his chest.

She refused to let him go like this. “You’re not going to die, damn you. Not when I’m finally free to love you, not when we’re finally all together!” She smacked her hand against Ethan’s chest and it felt so good to get out her frustrations that she did it again until soon she was pounding on his chest with her fists, her head thrown back as she screamed at the sky.

She barely felt Ki move to sit behind her.

He caught her wrists and brought her hands down in front of her, wrapping his arms around her as he held her hands against her stomach.

She shook her head. “He’s not gone. He’s not…”

Ki rocked her in his arms like the baby she was acting while she cradled Ethan’s motionless head in her lap. Her sobs and the sounds of the surrounding forest encroached the peaceful night.

She assumed Boone was dead and didn’t know how to feel about that. She thought she should be glad that Ethan had killed him, that he had saved her and Ki the way he had saved Isaiah from Rance. What good did it do, however, if Ethan was dead and gone and unable to enjoy the freedom of not being a hunted man anymore?

Things had just been starting to look good to her. She had just started to feel comfortable with her life, with her men in it, and had believed that they could make this relationship with the three of them work. She had just been starting to believe in fairy tales again.

Her life had never been a fairy tale though. Even when she had gotten her prince, there had been a catch. Maybe that was why Ethan was dead. God had been angered by her greed, by her faithlessness, that she hadn’t appreciated her bounty when she had received it. No woman deserved two good men like Ethan and Ki, except…

“I do,” she whispered.

“You do what?”

“Deserve you and I love you.”

“
I
don’t deserve
you
, Lucy, but it hasn’t stopped me from loving you yet.”

“You deserve me. And so did Ethan. I just wish I had told him how much I loved him. I don’t think he knew and now I’ll never have the chance.”

A cough shattered the air.

At first she thought it was Boone and his last death rattles, but the noise was too close.

“Did you…?” Ki started then trailed off. “My God. It’s…it’s a miracle!”

Lucy followed Ki’s wide-eyed stare, glancing down at Ethan’s chest. The bullet that had penetrated his torso was slowly working its way out as if Ethan’s body found the metal distasteful and was spitting it out.

She gasped and covered her mouth with her hands at the sight, watching as Ethan’s wound slowly sealed shut and the blood surrounding it seemed to vanish right before her eyes. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” she asked Ki, just to be sure.