Indescribable: Book Two of the Primordial Page 24

  “I would love you even if I hadn’t been marked,” Meghan said to Embry. “Now I know I would. I have seen the good in you. Thank you for reassuring me of that.” She kissed him on his forehead. “Even after all of this is over, after the mark has left me, I know that you will hold a special place in my heart. I’ll love you forever.”

  THORN’S CAR tore into the crowded parking lot of the amphitheater. There were people everywhere. The lot was full of mostly trucks that had younger people sitting on the tailgates. Beer cans and empty cups littered the ground around each setting. He drove through the lot and pulled up to the entrance. His crazy driving had caused a lot of attention among the drunken crowd. Crowds had gathered, watching him. He grabbed the box and jumped out of the car. He ran toward the entrance and didn’t pause at the attendants that were standing there.

  “Sir!” the attendant yelled after him. “Sir, we need your ticket!”

  Thorn kept running. By then there were two security officers that were hot on his heels. He ran through the crowd, bumping into several people and causing their beer to splash out. He ran onto the lawn area. There were people in chairs and on blankets. Like the parking lot, the lawn was already littered with beer cans and cups.

  Mandy was on the stage in front of him. She was wearing a pair of jeans, her boots, and a white shirt. The stage lights lit her blonde hair in a rotating change of color. She was performing like she never had before. It was exhilarating to hear her voice so loud through the professional sound system. There was the close up of her on the two gigantic screens that flanked each side of the stage. She looked happy. She was beautiful.

  Behind the stage, even in the dark, Thorn could see it. It appeared to be a dark cloud, but he knew that it was the mouth that he had had a vision of. It was the mouth of the creature that the talisman had released. It was the eater of worlds. And Thorn held in his hand exactly what the monster wanted. He pulled his arm back and flung the box as hard as he could. It sailed through the air and disappeared into the darkness. Thorn knew that it had gone down the monster’s throat.

  All at once, there was a swirling chaos of multicolored light in the sky. It was the creature coming undone. It was obvious that the drunker people that were around Thorn thought that it was part of the show and began to clap and cheer at the display. A second later, the light died down, and the sky was that of a perfect October night.

  AT RIMBAULT plantation, Meghan and Embry were still huddled together, holding onto one another.

  Meghan felt a heat release from her chest, and there was a glowing red orb that emerged from her and dissipated into the air. She knew that Thorn had succeeded in destroying the creature and that the Fractus box had been demolished in the process. It was only a matter of time until everything that had once been part of that realm would be gone. She pulled Embry close. She was right. She still loved him even with the mark being gone from her.

  He disappeared in her arms. Jericho stood up and looked around for where his master may have gone, confused about what had happened. Meghan got to her feet. A blinding, white light erupted from where Embry had been just a moment earlier. She knew that it was his angel. Soon his wings spread wide, and he wrapped her in his arms. She felt the safest that she ever had before.

  Another light came into the house. It floated through the wall. It was Faith, Embry’s long lost wife. Embry let Meghan go and went to her. They embraced one another. The light that was emanating from the two of them together was the brightest that Meghan had ever seen. It was like staring at the summer sun. Faith looked at Meghan and smiled. “Thank you,” Faith said.

  It filled Meghan with happiness to know that she had helped to reunite Embry with his wife. The two angels floated into the air and disappeared through the roof of the house. Meghan picked up Jericho and carried him outside. She walked down the steps that were on the front of the house and turned to look into the sky. Jericho followed her gaze and they could see the angels disappearing against the white moon and it was a comfort to know that they were out there. The feeling of knowing that love had no boundaries and that there was something beyond this life was indescribable.

  EPILOGUE

  MEGHAN WENT back to Truesdale where she planned on staying with her neighbor, Linda Spaulding, until the insurance settlement came through for her own house being destroyed in the terrible storm that had ripped through the area in July. Linda lived in a small trailer. The living quarters were tight for two women and a small Yorkie, but it was good to be with a friend.

  Meghan searched the internet and found out that what she had assumed and what Thomas Riley had told her and Valerie was true. Time had caught up with Embry and he wouldn’t have survived the gunshot wound that he had received on the battlefield. He had died in 1863 and was buried in his hometown.

  Meghan and Jericho visited the grave and saw that Embry had been buried next to Faith. She placed flowers on each of their graves. On the way home that day she listened to Mandy’s CD, You’ll Need a Koozie. Since the show, Mandy had been meeting with several producers and was likely to sign a contract in the coming weeks.

  Thorn had been arrested for criminal trespassing at the concert, but his mother had bonded him out the same night. Like Meghan, the mark of love that she had placed on Thorn with the arrow had disappeared when Fractus had been destroyed. He still wasn’t able to fall in love. Meghan thought about what Thomas Riley had said, that he had created a being with the likeness of a hummingbird that would be able to travel back in time, find the crone, and get a spell from her so that a Halford could end the curse on the Rimbault family once and for all, now that the Rimbault’s side of the feud had come to an end.

  Every so often in her dreams, Meghan would find herself wrapped within a pair of feathery wings, and she would wake with the most exhilarating feeling of promise.

  A CAR with the license plate of HUNTR1 was parked in front of a vacant fireworks store. It was a cinderblock building that had red, blue, orange, and yellow exploding rockets painted on the front. In the past several years, a major interstate had been added to the area, all but eliminating any passing through traffic that would give the store any customers. The gravel parking lot was overgrown with weeds, and the surrounding landscape was bushy with tree growth. It was a road that no one ever traveled on anymore.

  Shane was sitting in a metal, fold out chair and was tied to one of the concrete support columns inside the building. His hands were behind his back. He was still wearing the yellow Mandy Walker t-shirt that he had purchased at the bar the night of her show. His cap sat on the floor a good distance from him. He had a serious case of hat hair. All around him, the store space was empty of any shelves. It was warehouse-like. Sunlight filtered in from around the edges of the plywood that had been nailed over the windows. A woman stood in front of him. She was short with big boobs. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Underneath an open cloak, she was wearing a black tank top and jeans. She was holding a large knife. Her name was Holly Halford.

  “Give me back my hat,” Shane said flatly and then added, “I need my hat.” Like candy cigarettes, the cap was a comfort item for him. He wore it all the time, and to have someone like Holly Halford hold it away from him was infuriating.

  Holly shook her head and stepped closer to him. “You tell me where the box is,” she said.

  “I already told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got the wrong dude.”

  Holly rolled her eyes. “I’ve bee watching you, Thorn Rimbault. I seen you with that little Mandy Walker piece of work. You’re even wearing her shirt.”

  “I am not Thorn Rimbault,” he said sternly. “And I’m not telling you again, give me – back – my hat.” He understood that Holly had mistaken him for Thorn Rimbault that night at the motel. It was why she had busted into the room and brought him there to the old fireworks store. It was her intention of killing every surviving Rimbault for what they had done to her bloodline, for creating Fractus and causing them over
two centuries of emotional pain. It was what the stick figure stickers were on the back of her car. One by one, she intended to kill each of them. Shane remembered that one of the figures had already been scratched through. She was nuts.

  Holly didn’t know that the box had already been destroyed and that Fractus no longer existed.

  “Tell me or die,” she said. “It’s that simple.” She stepped even closer, and Shane could see her grip the knife tighter. It was like she was readying herself for the kill.

  Shane felt a stirring within his body. It was similar to the way he would feel when he would change into his Durori form, but this was somehow different. It was more of a fluttering.

  All at once, a pair of green and blue feathered wings flung themselves out from his shoulders and his face contorted into a long beak. Feathers that were the same color as those on the wings pushed through his skin and covered his entire body. The wings were moving at such a frenzied speed that they were actually buzzing.

  In front of him, Holly screamed with terror at what she was witnessing. The scream was so loud that it caused a flock of black birds to flutter from the bare tree branches that reached out over the building.

  Shane understood at that moment that he was the one that Thomas Riley had created in the likeness of a hummingbird.

  It was him that would travel into the past, searching for the crone.

  Hummingbird

  - Book Three of the Primordial -

  Available 2015