Splintered souls flames.., p.24
Splintered Souls (Flames of Time Book 1),
p.24
Another message was time stamped a few minutes later.
Laith: If I don’t come back, tell Ava I’ve loved her from the first moment my soul found hers.
If I don’t come back? Why wouldn’t he come back? A sick feeling of dread formed at the pit of my stomach.
Without stopping to think, I bolted down the stairs and grabbed Mom’s keys from the hook in the kitchen. I scribbled her a quick note and left it on the table then ran out the front door without bothering to lock it behind me. I needed to get to them before they did something even time travel couldn’t fix.
Driven by fear—fear of not getting there in time, fear of losing one or both of them, fear of ending up like Elizabeth—I pushed the speed limit, racing toward the lighthouse, praying I wasn’t already too late.
Laith’s last message played over and over in my head. Tell Ava I’ve loved her from the first moment my soul found hers. Lightning etched through the darkness, followed by a loud crack of thunder. Then the sky opened up, and blinding rain pelted the SUV.
He loved me.
The car fishtailed across the road near the bay exit, and my pulse took off as if my heart was trying to keep time with the windshield wipers. They moved so fast, slapping erratically against the glass, I feared one or both of them would break free and fly away. I should’ve pulled over until the rain let up. I probably should’ve never gone after them at all in a storm. But I would’ve never forgiven myself if I hadn’t.
I almost missed the turn from Shore Drive to the narrow lighthouse access road, taking the corner too quickly and almost flipping Mom’s Durango into the boulders. I swallowed down another panic attack and parked near the locked gate to make a run for the building. Once I’d left the safety of the car, rain quickly soaked through my clothes, drenching me to the bone. Tremors wracked my body with what was probably the beginning of hypothermia.
Streaks of pink and red tinged the horizon where the rising sun tried to peek through the gray clouds hanging low over the ocean. I scanned the area, unsure of exactly where they might be, only certain they were somewhere close, when I saw Maddox’s motorcycle parked haphazardly near the old caretaker’s cottage.
Another flash lit up the sky, and I saw a glint of something near the cliff. I took off running, my Chucks sinking into the soft ground with a squish. Cold rain stabbed my skin, burning my eyes and blurring my vision. I could barely make out the two dark figures facing off between the lighthouse and the rocky coast. They were both dressed in black and soaked to the skin, holding what looked like long daggers in their outstretched hands. I couldn’t tell them apart, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t let them destroy each other.
The angry roar of the waves drowned out the sound of their voices as they yelled back and forth, and I realized they hadn’t seen me yet. Fear paralyzed me. They were going to kill each other in front of me, and I could do nothing about it.
“Maddox!” I screamed his name, but the ocean swallowed up the sound. I willed him to turn in my direction, but nothing happened. A burst of adrenaline shot through me, and I started running again. My toe caught on a fallen branch, and I went down, hitting my head against the wet ground with a dull thud.
The fall knocked the wind out of me, stunning me into a silent stupor. While I lay there, fighting against my own limbs, a flash of memory—a vision, maybe—played behind my eyelids.
My soul mates were still arguing, but not along the seacoast. They fought in an open field, dressed in tight pants and loose shirts, looking as if they’d escaped from the pages of my European history book. Stalks of wheat blew in the wind as they clashed long swords against one another. Instead of waves crashing against the shore, the clang of steel on steel echoed through the air.
A girl with golden hair called their names as she rushed toward them from a stone house in the distance. “Maddox! Laith! Stop. Oh, please stop!” Her long, cornflower-blue skirt caught on a limb and ripped up the side as she ran. She ignored the tear and kept moving, anguish distorting her pretty features. She looked like me. Not an exact copy, but close enough to be my sister. And every stab of pain slicing through her wounded me. I felt her heart break seeing them fighting over her, and I knew she would do anything to stop them.
I sensed the instant the idea came to her—her plan to keep them safe from harm: her decision to end her own life. Not out of shame as Maddox had told me, but out of love. Her love for them was too much for one young girl to bear. I understood that infinitely too well.
“Stop, Elizabeth!” I screamed until my throat burned, but she turned and headed toward the barn. Then like a vapor, she disappeared. The barn, the wheat… Elizabeth… they were all gone, and only the rocky coast and the two boys battling for my soul were left.
Feeling had come back into my limbs, and I wrenched myself from the ground and took off running toward them again, desperation pouring off me like summer sweat.
“Maddox! Laith!” I screamed into the driving rain. “Please stop!”
Maddox… or was it Laith—I couldn’t tell them apart soaking wet and covered in mud—turned to me in horror. “Stay back, Ava. Stay out of this.”
“No! You don’t understand. Please. Please let me explain.” Wet hair slapped me in the face, but I kept going until I reached them. I stopped a few feet away, panting to catch my breath. “Elizabeth… she didn’t want you to destroy each other. Not over her. She just couldn’t stand by and watch anymore.”
“It’s that damn curse,” one of them shouted. Maddox maybe. “It’s ruined us all. There’s only one way to end it.”
“What are you talking about?” I gaped at him. His tone and the look of defeat in his eyes terrified me.
“One of us has to die,” Laith—I think it was Laith—said so casually I almost missed it.
I darted my eyes between them. They both had shallow cuts scattered over their exposed skin. Their shirts were so soaked the fabric turned transparent. “I can’t let you do that.”
“We should have finished this the first time.” Laith wiped a bead of blood from his lip with the back of his hand.
“And we would have, had we not been interrupted.” Only Maddox could have felt that pain so deeply. His face twisted with what had to be the memory of Elizabeth’s death.
With Elizabeth’s sacrifice still fresh in my mind, I inched toward the rocks as they stepped toward each other, daggers at the ready once again. I turned to the boy who I was certain was Maddox. “Even if Laith hadn’t tricked her, she would’ve still taken her own life. She did it to save you both. Can’t you see that?”
Maddox’s eyes locked with mine but he spoke to his brother. “Tell her.”
“Laith, no.”
Laith? I whipped around to face the real Maddox. His eyes clouded over with remorse and something else.
Fear.
“She deserves to know what you did,” Laith spoke from my other side as they both flanked me, and though my eyes were trained on Maddox, I sensed Laith moving closer.
“I didn’t do anything.” Maddox’s shoulders sagged, and he let the hand with the dagger drop to his side.
“Oh, come on.” Laith seemed to get a sick pleasure from his brother’s pain. “Tell her how you manipulated her dreams so she’d believe it was me who tricked Elizabeth.”
“No!” I took a step back, loose earth shifting under my feet. Icy spray soaked my back with each wave breaking against the rocks. “That’s impossible. I saw—”
“You saw what he wanted you to see,” Laith snapped, and I flinched from the bitterness of his voice. He gave me a sad smile. “You don’t need to be afraid of me, Ava. I’ve never lied to you.”
“You don’t understand.” Maddox drew my attention back to him, a mask of pain changing his face. “What happened with Elizabeth… that was centuries before I met you. I’ve atoned for my mistakes.”
“Mistakes?” Laith barked out a laugh. “You mean your calculated decisions. You’ve been manipulating her this entire time.”
“Is it true?” The guilty expression on his face told me everything I needed to know. “How could you? I-I loved you.”
“Loved?” Maddox’s expression turned cold in an instant. “And now, what? You love him?”
I shook my head, stepping farther away from the two of them, confusion taking over my thoughts. The familiar prickling I felt in their presence had spread through me like a virus, illuminating my senses like a thousand strings of tiny white Christmas lights. “I can’t. It’s too much.”
Maddox tore his eyes away from mine and charged his brother, grabbing him around the middle and dragging him to the ground with a sickening thud. Laith raised up to his knees to throw the first punch, then they rolled around pummeling each other, coating themselves in a thick layer of mud.
As if they’d pissed off the gods, a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, making me flinch.
“Watch out, Ava! You’re gonna fall.” I wasn’t sure which one of them had spoken, but the words didn’t make sense. Was he really warning me now? Didn’t he know I’d already fallen? Hard and fast. For both of them in their own way. What I needed to watch out for was getting my heart broken, to watch out that I didn’t let myself get pulled into the madness surrounding them. His warning had come much too late for that. Too late for all of it.
My brother’s words suddenly came back to me. You’re stupid if you think Maddox is the good brother. Had I really been so wrong about them? Had I misjudged Laith’s intentions from the first moment I’d met him? Maybe Elizabeth was right, and I needed to run from both of them.
I screamed as my foot slipped on loose gravel, and I felt myself sliding over the edge. A wave rose up to meet me as my feet disappeared over the side. My midsection slammed against the jagged rocks, forcing the air from my lungs in a whoosh. “Maddox!”
“Jesus, Ava!” He lunged toward me, sliding across the ground until his outstretched hand reached mine.
“I’m slipping,” I cried, fumbling for a foothold on the slippery rocks. But I was too cold, and my body had already started to go numb.
“Don’t let go of her!” Laith yelled as he scrambled toward us on hands and knees.
Maddox gave me a stiff smile then, gripping my fingers as tightly as he could, he struggled to haul me back up. “Don’t worry. I’ll never let go.”
Another wave shattered against me like a million knives in my skin. In the back of my mind, I knew if I fell, the craggy rocks below would batter me until there was nothing left, but I couldn’t hold on anymore. “Maddox, I can’t—”
“Don’t you dare let go, Ava!” Laith clenched his jaw, scraping his chest along the sharp corners as he reached for me, but it was no use.
Every drop of energy I’d had had been used up. I’d become one of those old rag dolls my mother collected when I was six. And if I didn’t let go, I’d drag Maddox over the side with me.
Then Laith’s fingers brushed against my wrist. “Do you trust me?”
“What are you doing?” Maddox gritted his teeth, trying to get a better grip on me. “You’d better not be planning what I think you are. I have her. I have you, Ava.”
“Ava.” Laith’s eyes locked on mine. “Do. You. Trust. Me?”
“No!” Maddox shouted as he grappled to hold on to me, but I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore, and Laith looked so certain.
I sucked in a breath and held it for a beat. “Yes.” The word had barely passed my lips when Laith hurled himself over the side.
Maddox lunged, his eyes wild with horror, his hands grasping at empty air to reconnect with mine. “Oh, God. Ava. No!”
The look of desperation contorting his face when my fingers slipped from his in that flash of an instant before Laith snatched me from the rocks would be permanently branded in my brain. As long as I lived, I would never forget the emptiness in Maddox’s eyes.
A scream bubbled up from the tips of my toes, but just as it was about to burst free, just as Laith and I were about to be crushed against the rocks, we were sucked into the vortex, falling through space and time as the abyss took us.
Dear Reader,
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Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I’d like to thank my diehard fans. You know who you are, and I really wouldn’t be here without you. I could thank you every minute of every day, and that still doesn’t seem enough. I hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. I promise not to leave you hanging on that cliff too long.
I’d also like to give special thanks to everyone who pushed, prodded, and helped me along the way:
To the people who take the time to leave reviews—yes, even the bad ones—because praise feeds a writer’s soul, and criticism makes us work even harder the next time.
To my parents for planting the creative seed that grew into a lifelong passion and for never discouraging me from listening to the voices in my head. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without your love and guidance throughout my life. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’ve managed to stick around long enough to see me realize my dreams. Now you need to hang out until I hit the big time. I think I still owe you money.
To Lauren and Alexa, for keeping me up on the latest lingo and making sure I never lost sight of the teen voice. And to Spencer for reminding me I’m not a teenager anymore and probably shouldn’t flirt with his friends.
To Josh Hulsey for asking me every question imaginable to prevent the existence of holes in the world I’d created. I couldn’t have traveled through time without you.
To Karen Allen and Jessica Anderegg—my top-notch editing team—for making sure I never get away with anything cheap or easy.
To Louise Flynn, Marie Patchen, Mercy Pilkington, and Candy Johnson—some of the best beta readers ever—for taking time away from your own projects and commitments to help me with mine. And to J. Leigh for making sure Aunt Bess didn’t stray too far from the truth.
To Red Adept Publishing—and the best publishing staff anywhere—for not letting me get my way all the time—even when I pout.
To Glendon at Streetlight Graphics for keeping cool under pressure when we couldn’t seem to nail down a concept for the cover. It wasn’t the idea I had going in, but I can’t thank him enough for the final product.
To Mary Fan for helping me keep my sanity during the hardest parts, like picking the perfect hot guy for a cover that never got to see the light of day and encouraging me to keep going when I thought I might pack it in and give up.
To my family and friends for allowing me to bounce crazy ideas off them at the weirdest hours of the day or night.
And lastly, to my husband for allowing me to quit my day job all those years ago to become a full-time writer and making it possible for me to do what I love every day. Without you, I’d still be jotting down stories on bar napkins while waiting for my turn to sing karaoke or working in a bank, waiving overdraft fees even when I wasn’t supposed to. I know you don’t always love what I do—or don’t do… like the cooking, the dishes, or the laundry—but you allow me to do it anyway, and you almost never complain about it. I love you.
More Books by Erica Lucke Dean
To Katie With Love
Suddenly Sorceress
Craving Caine
Ashes of Life (with Laura M. Kolar)
Jewels of Desire DUO #1
Diamond Duplicity (Book 1) (with Elise Delacroix)
Ruby Ransom (Book 2) (with Elise Delacroix)
About the Author
After walking away from her career as a business banker to pursue writing full-time, Erica Lucke Dean moved from the hustle and bustle of the big city to a small tourist town in the North Georgia Mountains, where she lives in a 90-year-old haunted farmhouse with her workaholic husband, her 180-pound lap dog, and at least one ghost.
When she’s not writing or tending to her collection of crazy chickens and diabolical ducks, she’s either reading bad fan fiction or singing karaoke in the local pub. Much like the main character in her first book, To Katie With Love, Erica is a magnet for disaster and has been known to trip on air while walking across flat surfaces.
How she’s managed to survive this long is one of life’s great mysteries.
Erica Lucke Dean, Splintered Souls (Flames of Time Book 1)
