Number of the Beast (Paladin Cycle, Book One) (21 page)

“
You know nothing about me
or my mother. How can you say such a thing?” Lynn hissed, like a
hormonal alley cat.

“
Because,” Ira said, her
gentle smile fading. “After the fusing, Geminus cannot survive
without their mate. Separation would mean certain death. Your
Geminus parents gave you to a surrogate mother so that you would
have the chance to mature and that a mate would claim you.” Ira
glided across the courtyard like a dainty string of silk. She
tugged on Lynn’s arm, urging her toward the fountain.

“
Get away. Don’t touch
me!”

Ira clasped a strong hand around
Lynn’s wrist.

“
What are you doing?” Lynn
tried to pull away, but Ira possessed uncanny strength for a dainty
string of silk. Icy water rolled off one of the statue’s wings. The
liquid cauterized Lynn’s wound, sending sharp tingles through her
hand and up her arm.

Lynn examined the stub:
the blood, severed skin and bone gone, erased. “It...d-doesn’t hurt
anymore.” She stared at the missing digit, but could not even see a
hairline scar.

“
I am here to serve.” Ira
bowed. “I will fetch you food.”

“
Wait.” Lynn grabbed at
the ghost’s robe, her fingers slipping through the fabric and
touching cold hard flesh. Lynn recoiled.

Ira smiled sweetly. “Yes,
Mistress?”

When she looked into the
woman’s sad gray eyes, Lynn lost her train of thought for just a
moment. “Why do you ingratiate yourself to him?” She scowled. “Are
you in love with Isaac?”

Ira shuddered, as if in
fear of the very thought. “I feel nothing but gratitude for Master
Isaac.”

Lynn’s brows furrowed. Her
face scrunched, conveying her doubt. “Gratitude for
what?”

Ira whirled and floated
toward the edge of the courtyard. “I became with child and was
unpromised and unwed. My brother had me killed and my soul was sent
to Purgatory.”

Lynn stared at the back Ira’s pale
scalp. She was a woman once and wronged by her own blood. Now she
was a slave or servant or whatever, rescued from a place called
‘Purgatory’. A place Lynn’s Baptist pastor had preached did not
exist. Heaven or Hell were the only two options for the dearly
departed.

Yesterday Lynn watched her
daughter—whose name she could no longer recall—practice ballet,
readying for her recital. Today her daughter was dead and she was
listening to the woes of a ghost. And the phantom’s tale afflicted
her with more sorrow than the memory of her own daughter’s murder.
She struggled for words of consolation, but alas could not find any
words of worth.

Ira’s robe fluttered with
the shift of the wind. She glanced over her shoulder and gave a
weak smile. “My brother gave me to Union soldiers. They raped me
before peppering me with buckshot.”

“
As in the Civil War’s
Union army?”

Ira nodded, gliding her
hand over her slightly protruding belly. A baby bump. “This was
once my world too, in another place and time.”

Lynn gasped and covered
her mouth. “You’re not still...”

“
He’s within me, where
he’ll remain until the end of time with shrapnel lodged in his
tiny unborn body.”

Lynn swallowed a dry lump.
“I didn’t mean to pry. Good Lord, forgive me.”

“
You need not apologize. I
am grateful to serve Master Isaac and you, for you both can have
the love that life never granted me.”

Lightning flickered in the western
hemisphere.

Whiteness blinded Lynn. Unable to see
her own body, her head rushed through a long, winding white
corridor, chasing the fleeting spirits of her past; her faceless
children, with sunken black eyes, stood sullenly in a threshold and
vanished into mist as she raced through them. Another white
corridor blurred past her peripheral vision. Several ivory doors
slammed shut on either side of the hallway. The slow flapping of
wings echoed from around the next bend.

Then she stood in the
courtyard again. The odor from a wet rat drifted from the edge of
the brick wall several yards away. The heels of her hands pressed
against her eyes. She felt Ira’s cold grasp on her shoulder. Lynn
lowered her hands and gazed into the tenderness of a tragic
soul.

Her first friend in her new
life.

“
You are not of this
world,” Ira said. “You’re feeling the proof of it right now. The
quicker you submit to your inner Beast, the quicker your soul will
be at peace.”

“
My family was murdered,”
Lynn said, her tone matter-of-fact. She wanted to be angry but
hunger made her weak yet the thought of eating caused nauseating
cramps. “My supposed mate has abandoned me without a word of
explanation and now you’re saying the woman I thought was my mother
isn’t who I thought she was.” She threw up her hands. “And I’m not
even human. My whole life has been one big fat lie.”

“
Your surrogate mother, I
am sure, cared for you deeply, as if you were her own child.
Otherwise, your Geminus parents would not have entrusted her with
you.”

“
So my parents are from
another world? And they sent me here to live with an adopted
mother?”

“
Yes, Mistress.” Ira gave
a thin lipped smile. “It is the safest option to assure the
survival of the young.”

Lynn let out a shaky
laugh. “Safest? The more you tell me, the more questions I
have.”

Ira floated toward the
fountain. “Then let me start from the beginning. The Geminus
originated beyond the stars, and beyond the veils of this universe
and reality. Galmoria—” she waved a hand over the statues “—gave
birth to the first Geminus twins on a distant moon after mating
with multiple beasts. But the Geminus have since spread among the
universes for they are the most territorial creature in existence.
To protect their offspring, the females are sent to live with
surrogate mothers, and the males are sent to harsher worlds where
they will mature into stags like Master Isaac. No two males can
inhabit the same world or they will destroy one another. They will
even destroy their own offspring.”

A cool wind blew. Lynn
hugged the silk robe tighter against her body. “Then Isaac came
here to find me? To mate with me?”

Ira shook her head. “There
has not been a Geminus mating on this world since Sodom and
Gomorrah. You are very fortunate, for the odds of discovering your
twin are astronomical.”

“
If not to find me, then
why did he come here?”

“
Isaac
returned in search of the one Galmoria calls
The Beloved
.”

“
The Beloved?” Jealousy
flared inside her. A river of blood flashed in her mind. Her mouth
watered. Lynn sat on the base of the cool marble fountain. “Why did
he abandon me here with you? To go find this ‘Beloved’
one?”

“
Before Master Isaac and
you can mate, he must dominate Galmoria and prove his seed is
worthy of procreation. She is the Priestess who must bless the
Fusing before the two of you can mate and you can mature into
Vixenhood, a fully matured Geminus capable of bearing
cubs.”

“
Isaac must...dominate
that woman?” Lynn gestured with a nod toward the
statues.

“
She is not a woman,” Ira
said, giggling. “She was once a demigod, and led an army of mighty
beings against the forces of God, defeating all the saints and holy
warriors of a distant world before claiming it as her own
dominion.”

“
I don’t understand any of
that,” Lynn said. “And I refuse to believe I am the offspring of a
demon creature that opposes God!”

“
All you need to know is
that you belong to Isaac and he belongs to you—and that he will do
all in his power to protect you, and place you high upon the cosmic
throne.”

“
Me on a throne?” She
scoffed. “How can he promise that then abandon me with a naked
ghost?” Hot tears slipped down her face. She covered her mouth. “I
need him here...with me. Not with her!” Lynn flailed her hand
toward one of the statues.

“
In time, this will all
come to make perfect sense,” Ira said.

Lynn glanced up the walls
of the mansion surrounding the lush courtyard. The estate was like
something she’d only read about in dark romance novels. Counts and
governors or dukes would wisp homely young women to their elegant
abodes and romance the pants right off them. She returned her gaze
to Ira. “You want to know something crazy?”

The ghost floated to stand
beside Lynn. “Yes madam. Tell me something crazy.”

“
I can’t remember my past
anymore. My kids. My husband.” Lynn snickered. “All I can think
about is Isaac and pleasing him. What kind of monster am
I?”

“
You are
no monster, Mistress Lynn. You are
Geminus
.”

Lynn sighed. “This isn’t
the way it’s supposed to be. Love and romance is what fairytales
are made of. Not beasts who bite each other’s finger’s
off.”

“
Before Isaac, on this
plane of earth, did you experience love? Was it a, as you say,
fairytale?”

Lynn chewed her lip. “My
husband was a backstabbing, cheating loser and was never home. Not
a fairytale or love.” She hesitated. “But this, what’s happening to
me and Isaac...it’s anything but a holy union.”

Ira frowned. “I never said
any of it was holy.”

The thought should terrify her, but a
warmth tingled in her groin, suggesting anything but revulsion. She
desired Isaac, the Geminus beast. And that desire was so
overwhelming it made her laugh drunkenly.

Ira wrapped a frail arm
around Lynn’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“
I’m frigid. Clinically
diagnosed twelve years ago with Female Sexual Arousal Disorder. I
gave up alcohol, smoking and fatty foods. I talked to a counselor
and even prayed with my pastor. But I’ve never had an orgasm in all
my thirty-one years.”

Ira smiled. “Only Master
Isaac can meet your needs. Now that you are together, you will know
pleasure.” A devious smile tugged at her lips. “And know it again
and again, until you beg for mercy.”

Lynn’s mind flashed back
to the feel of his lips on her clit. His hands on her body. The
brisk and clean scent of his lust, pheromones seeping from his
body. The orgasm that rocked inside her, begging for
release.

Suddenly she was drawn to her feet and
circled the fountain. The robe’s tail dragged behind her. The
marble fountain whispered to her the way the wind whispers to the
trees. The water flowing over the stone grooves and edges of the
legs, faces, wings and scales sparkled like droplets of crystal. A
summer night’s breeze teased Lynn’s hair. She smiled as she met
jeweled eyes.

Galmoria reached out with
ebony talons. The water trailed down her marbled maiden figure and
smelled pure as a country rain. Cerulean moonlight showered the
statue in a pale glow.

Lynn moved around the fountain. She
eyed the statue of the demon in a pose like she was taking flight.
The behemoth scorpion riding on her back, glassy yellow eyes, and
intricately carved carapace regarded her with
skepticism.

Ira remained behind her.
“She is Galmoria, and that is Vostrict, the Lunar Guardian, who
serves her.”

“
Something familiar about
her,” Lynn said.

“
She is your mother,
Mistress. Your Eve.”

Lynn reached for the
statue’s outstretched hand. Foundation rumbling, the three stone
women crept toward her. The ebony wings became the consistency of
shadows. Six wings unfurled before enveloping her in a warm and
protective embrace. Lynn nuzzled into the silken fur, closing her
eyes.

“
Mistress?” Ira’s hand
touched her arm.

Lynn shuddered, realizing the fountain
was intact and stationary.

“
Are you okay, Mistress
Lynn?”

Lynn purred and gazed at
the stars. “I’m home.” Her legs began to shake. Dizziness made her
blink. Stumbling, she grabbed onto the statue for support. Her hand
slipped down the slippery stone and she tumbled her knees. Rolling
to her back, she closed her eyes and fell unconscious.

The black waters of Sera’s Pond lapped
the moonlit banks. A sweet wind creaked the ancient boards and
rafters of the nearby Rawlin’s house. The shadow of a winged
panther descended. The waters boiled before parting, revealing an
illuminated portal in the pond’s bed, a simple threshold with
pulsating multi-hued smoke. The Beast entered the
gateway.

Along a craggy terrain, Isaac rode a
black stallion with crimson seraphim wings. Dagger-like stones,
petrified trees, and bottomless canyons scattered the region while
a violent electrical storm eternally raged with the clouds of the
planet ruled by a perpetual and massive full moon. Lakes of molten
magma sprawled on either side of him. Through wisps of smoke and
shrouds of ash, the horse leapt and soared.

A petrified skull of a behemoth alien
creature, Nephruch, loomed in the distance. Multiple horns
protruded from the skull and towered into the stormy atmosphere.
Hollow slanted eyes gaped, one sewn shut by a massive spider web.
The other still possessed a single yellow eyeball.