"No." She wished he'd shut the fuck up.
The thought startled her. Marina had never wanted Drew to stop talking in her life and she'd certainly never had such nasty inner dialogue towards him before. Not even when he'd been endlessly leaving her, the asshole.
"Something is wrong." She whirled around.
The others spoke in low voices in the other room. How could they not see what happened? Why wasn't anyone doing something to help her?
"Clearly." Drew's calm answer didn't make her feel better. It only made her want to claw out his eyes.
She reached out her hand to him in a stop gesture. "Get out of my head. I don't want you in there with whatever is happening. "
"Tough shit. You invited me in. You're not getting rid of me, especially not when you're under attack."
His words jolted her. "Is that what's happening?"
"I'm not seeing Sebastian but I can't think of any other explanation. Charma?" He called over his shoulder for the emotional healer.
"No." She grabbed his arm. "I don't need her. Not yet. I need…"
The room tilted on its axis. At least for her. No one else seemed to notice. Colors turned to grey before the room spun. Her stomach lurched but her head, so filled with anger she couldn't decipher, didn't let fear flow inside. No, the whole thing annoyed her as much as a fly blowing past her head.
Suddenly, it all cleared. Only, as she remained in the room, everyone else in her company was gone.
In their place, a man she had never seen before but instantly recognized appeared. The scribe. If she could have written him into existence, he would have looked exactly as he did. Old, white-haired, with a beard Santa Claus would be proud to sport. He was also bleeding from the gut and, as she stared at him, open-mouthed, he collapsed to the ground.
She darted forward and grabbed his arm, trying to ease his collapse as best she could. "What happened?"
"I'm sorry about the anger. It was all I could project to get your attention." He coughed, blood coming out of the left corner of his mouth. "I had to get your attention, to hold off until you all came. Then you were the only one reachable. Why don't they know their pasts? Why don't they attach to them?"
"Sir." She rubbed his back. "I'm not sure what that even means. I can see past lives because it's part of my power. We have a healer. He can help you."
"Too late." He shook his head. "I must say this is a first. All the years I've been with all of you, half the time you don't know I exist. It'll be nice to go home at last. Maybe they can send someone else for the future. Who knows what will happen? The few us who can help try to do as we will. I'm afraid it's too far gone."
He coughed and there was more blood. She didn't know this man other than the distant recollections of times long fled. "I remember you."
"Marina." He could barely speak and she leaned closer to hear his whispered words. "I'm afraid this time you can't win. I see you all now. Never so weak, never so unprepared."
He wasn't telling her anything she didn't already know. The feel of Drew in her mind called her attention.
They'd finally come together and only yesterday she'd never have believed it possible. "It's always darkest before the dawn."
"Maybe. The sign is given."
Life left his eyes and she let herself stare down at the man she knew the others would never see. He'd lived on their planet and never been a part of it. Waiting to give the signal, holding off, allowing them time. She'd failed him.
With a rush of energy she was pulled back into her body and stared up at Drew's frantic face. His eyes were huge, his hands shaking.
"Where did you go, sweetheart? You were here and you weren't. I couldn't reach you, not really."
"The sign is given." She closed her lids and let him hold her. "We can all die now. We're officially his to kill."
* * * *
Drew held Marina in his arms looking at the cave walls. His girl slept, hopefully recovering from whatever the scribe had done to her to get her attention. He couldn't join her in sleep.
As gently as he could to not disturb her, he moved her until she slept on the pillow instead of him before scooting out of the bed. Leonardo wanted him to lead, fine Drew would play ball. But they were all damn well going to do what he said.
He wasn't surprised to find Leonardo sitting in the study by himself. What did shock him was the sight of Leonardo sitting on the coach holding his head in his hands like he was in some kind of pain. For a second, Drew stood unmoving as he watched the man he realized he both liked and resented the fuck out of.
Why was that? Well, probably because he had never particularly liked being told what to do. His human father could be blamed for his authority issues. The mother fucker kept control with a whip and fist. Drew associated orders with beatings. Even though he knew it, he'd never be able to get over it. Or maybe he would. Who the fuck knew?
Also, Leonardo knew Marina in ways Drew never would. He'd been there when she had been young, without powers, and on her own. He'd played a role for her that should have been Drew's. He knew there was never anything sexual between them, that was just not the way Outsiders worked. Yet, he begrudged Leonardo the time, the memories, the place he played in Marina's life.
If feeling the way he did made him petty then so be it.
But he liked Leonardo, too. He could be funny as hell when he wanted to be. A dry sense of humor no one saw coming. He used to lead them really well, too. The man could plan, plot, translate, and motivate before he had gone sour.
Drew leaned against the doorway. "What was that about today? Why put me in charge in a situation when your brain is the best weapon we have?"
Leonardo raised his eyes to look at him. "I'm supposed to be motivating you to give a shit. But you're not going to, are you? When all of this is said and done, you are going to care as much or as little as you always have."
Well, he'd not seen Leonardo's response coming. "Supposed to be? You take orders from someone I don't know about? Our ancestors come back down from wherever the fuck they watch us from and tell you to get me worked up?"
Their leader sat back. "You might be surprised how much I have to do what others want. I'm not really in charge. I'm a glorified manager. And you didn't answer my question. Don't think I didn't notice."
"You didn't ask a question. You made an observation which may or may not be accurate. I didn't hear you ask me anything." Yeah, he was being a douche and he knew it. Still, he walked over and sat next to Leonardo on the coach.
"Go fuck yourself." Leonardo shook his head but there was no heat in his statement.
Drew snorted.
How was he to answer when he didn't really get his feelings himself? "I try not to care too much about anything. Obviously, I failed when it came to Rina. To be fair, she's the only thing I've ever wanted to give a shit about. Attachments lead to loss. I try really hard to not care about anything which might be taken away from me." Like his human mother, his home, his dog… The old man had systematically destroyed everything and anything he ever showed the slightest affection for.
"That's good and fine." Leonardo shrugged. "You think I want to care? Would love to stay blasé about the whole thing only I was raised to believe, right or wrong, I had a destiny and I don't see any end to any of this if I don't see it through."
"Here's what I'll promise you. I'm going to keep Marina safe. I love her. She's mine." He clenched his teeth from the power even saying the words had on him.
Enough emotion to bring him to his gods be damned knees. "She cares about our destiny, the battles matter to her. Since no one, living or dead, has the power to make her do what she doesn't want to do, there's no way I'm going to get her to leave this place, or any of you. I promise to care as much as I need to keep her alive, well, and happy. How's that?"
"So what you're saying is you promise to fight with us just not to give a shit about us?"
Sounded pretty shitty when Leonardo said it. Sometimes the truth turned out to be that way.
At least in his life. "Maybe I'll change my mind. I don't know. I can't make any promises to care."
"Fine." Leonardo stood. "When this is behind us, I won't invite you for a beer."
Drew never saw the explosion coming. One second there was normalcy—being an ass with Leonardo, thinking of Marina, contemplating the parts of his life that were shitty—the next there a noise louder than he'd ever heard. Then everything went red. He couldn't understand any of it. He never even gasped before the world went black.
The demon could kill them. And maybe he had.
"Marina."
He called out to her before he couldn't think at all. One last thought to send to the universe.
"Back to the beginning Drew…"
Who—or what?—had spoken to him?
A total nothingness was all he knew.
* * * *
The sound of the ocean woke him up. He sat straight upwards. "What the hell?"
His head throbbed and he rubbed at it, causing the white silk sheets covering him to fall off. It was then he realized he was completely naked. Next to him, someone moaned and he jolted. It took him a second to calm his racing heart.
How had he gotten here? Who the fuck was in the bed next to him? What was going on?
The moaning woman sat up, leaning on her elbows as she stared at him. He breathed out his relief. Marina. Thank the gods. Except…not? When had she grown her hair so long and died part of it blue?
"You look worse than I feel. We have got to lay off the papaya mixes. They're not good for our metabolisms. Not even an Outsider can avoid the hangover."
Her voice sounded wrong. He had to think. How had he gotten into the bed? The last thing he remembered was…nothing. A total blank. He knew who he was and who the woman lying next to him was, but other than those two things, he had no earthly idea what the fuck was going on.
"Marina"—he cleared his throat—"I need you to help me."
She opened and closed her mouth before saying, "Who the hell is Marina?"
"You are." He didn't have amnesia, at least not as far as Marina was concerned.
He could recall her name, she was his soul mate. They'd been together in many lifetimes even if he didn't ever need to remember them. She belonged to him.
His love moved until she sat on her knees. The sheet fell a little bit exposing the upper part of her breasts, which, of course, he noticed and his cock jumped to attention. Down boy. He swallowed. Really, not the time.
And as much as he was attracted to her, not his Marina either, if the way she gawked at him was to be believed.
"Oh, this is unbelievable." She shook her head. "We finally banish the son of a bitch back to his hell dimension and you get sent here? What's going on? Where is my husband and what have you done with him?" Her voice rose on every word and he wondered if she got more upset if she'd end up hitting him.
Drew put his hands out in front of him. She was a lot smaller than he but he wasn't dressed and there were lots of ways she could wound him he'd really rather not experience.
"Look. I don't know what's going on exactly. If I did, I would be happy to share. I woke up here. My name is Drew Dubowski. I'm an Outsider. And you look like my girl…Marina. Only you're saying you're not. In other circumstances, I'd think you were playing a joke but seeing as everything is so royally fucked, I honestly believe this is another major screw up I didn't see coming."
The woman closed her mouth and stared at him, an unreadable expression on her face. If he held any doubt about who she was he didn't anymore. He couldn't read her at all. Although they shared a face, the woman with him wasn't his.
"They told us we would be born over and over again to fight this war. We didn't believe them. The way we beat the big bad down? I thought for sure he'd stay where he was put. You're telling me it really happened. We live, we die, we fight again. Regardless of whether we win or not. That really sucks."
She looked down and because he wasn't at all sure what to do, he reached out and patted her hand. "You don't remember your past lives? My version of you, she can see all of them as a whole. It's a little freaky, actually." Although he'd kill for some of her knowledge right now. Maybe he should have let her talk about what she knew and not told her their last lives weren't important. What a way for him to realize he was being an ass.
Did he have to get hit over the head to learn his lessons every time?
"We haven't had past lives before. This is our first go round. The challenge was set, the scribe set in motion, and we came down to kick butt and take names."
The scribe…something about the word triggered a memory. "Oh, he died. Yes, he was killed. That's right. I remember it happening. Sebastian killed the scribe."
Between him and Marina, they needed to take memory classes. At least his seemed to be coming back. He didn't want to be locked up for six months while everyone held their breath to see if it would return.
"The scribe died? And you named your demon?"
"No, I mean, not personally. He kind of came with the name. It's complicated."
The woman stood up, obviously not ashamed by her nudity, and walked to the closet. She pulled out a long, white dress and slipped it over her head. Since he knew for certain she wasn't his Marina, his cock had deflated and he didn't feel anything when he looked at her more than when he saw any other woman.
The white dress matched everything else in the room. The sheets, the curtains. In fact, the only color he saw at all was the blue in her hair. Weird…
She walked to the edge of the bed and sat down.
"Magic doesn't make mistakes. It's a hard lesson to learn. Especially when someone you care about dies. We only lost two. But still, I'll never be over it. Anyway, something sent you here. Specifically to me. We're going to go with the premise there is something you need to learn from me. A way I can help my future self. You seem so different from my version of you. He's never so…hidden. Anyway, we're going to figure this out. Then we'll get one of my people to send you back to your time. Presumably, my love will return to me then and we can all put this from our heads forever."
"Do you think in the mean time I could borrow a pair of his pants?"
"Oh." She stood up. "Absolutely."
Great. Having their talk not naked would make it so much better. "Listen, what you said, about magic not making mistakes. You're wrong. Magic has done nothing but fail us over and over again. It's like we're cursed or something. From moment one, it separated us from each other. Marina, my you, grew up oceans away from me. I couldn't help her, couldn't save her from pain."
Of course, he'd never been so far away from her as he was since he'd woken up in the wrong timeline.
"Maybe you are. Cursed, I mean. Why don't I—meaning your version of me—do something about it?'
He raised his eyebrows. "Can you?"
"Just how powerless are you people?"
More and more every day…
Chapter Nine
Sebastian watched the caves burn with his mouth hanging open. They were dead. All the Outsiders were gone, removed from his presence and he'd never have to deal with their meddling again. Those fuckers.
He should be celebrating, and he would be, had he caused the explosion that killed them. He'd had nothing to do with it whatsoever. What the hell was going on?
"I did this for you."
His mother's voice wafted over him and he would have groaned if he didn't believe doing so would land him in a world of pain. What was his mom doing in his dimension?
Bad enough he'd had to put up his sister two years ago.
"Put your body back on and show yourself to me. Turn around. This very second."
Sebastian gritted his incorporeal teeth and did as the woman who birthed him instructed. When he felt fully formed again, he turned around. His mother leaned against a tree, regarding him silently. She'd taken a human body and he wished rolling his eyes at her wouldn't earn him pain.
The woman who had raised him looked like a little girl of e
ight. Blonde, blue-eyed, she could have been doing cereal commercials on television. No one would ever guess she was a hell beast who had eaten humans for dinner, which was probably exactly the point.
"Mother."
She nodded to him. "Son."
"What brings you here?" You stupid bitch.
"Things have been going very badly for you." She shook her head. "I came to spare you the wrath of your father. He's ready to come down here, rip you home, and stick you in the basement for the next ten generations."
His temper rose, he could feel it in his cheeks. "I'm winning. I'm the first one of us to ever kill the scribe. They were opened and ready for me to finish. And then you came and did it for me."
"Yes, you killed the scribe. How stupid can you be? He was there for both sides of the equation. You weren't yet able to kill them and they weren't yet allowed to really dispose of you. Why do you think you're still floating around down here without a body?" She sighed loudly. "What if one of them gets the brilliant idea to box you up? Stick you in a magic proof bottle and carry you around until they all die from old age? There is nothing to stop them from doing so since the scribe is dead."
If they'd had anywhere near that much power he'd have been in big trouble long ago. "The thing is, mother—" Calling the eight year old in front of him the name felt utterly ridiculous. He was going to have to power surge for a week to get over this moment. "I took steps very early on to make sure they would never have the powers they did in the past. Not this time around. Separating them from each other, denying them the wisdom of their parents, it was all part of the plan to reach a point where I could clearly dominate the group of them."
"Son, you never want to underestimate the underdog. When have we won in the past? When they were utterly overwhelmed because they underprepared. You had eighteen individuals all struggling every day against you. They never stopped. Trust me, the tide did not turn in your favor."
"Mother…"
She walked over and placed her hand on his arm. "Come on. Enough with this nonsense. I want to feed on their corpses. Then I'll leave you alone to manage this realm on your own. I think there are three Outsiders still out there, if you are so determined to kill their kind today. You have one at your beck and call don't you? The Alexa girl. Really, I don't know how you could stand touching her body. Don't you just hate the smell? Why make creatures who sweat so much?"