Page 19 of Ember and Ash

“What is a Seer?!” I shout, trying to understand what’s happening, but I never get the chance.

Action blows up around me, as in literally. The demons in front of me explode into ash—an excessive amount of ash—covering me and choking me. Three of the men I’d seen fighting the monsters at the front of the house appear where the demons had stood, clearly responsible for the ash cloud I’m currently, and once again, ingesting into my lungs. Logically, I should run toward them, but my instinct in this moment is to stay with Micah. I whirl around and step to Micah’s side. Jeremy is surrounded by four men, two of whom are holding what look like small rocket launchers—if I can trust my obsession with action movies as expert opinion. The men fire the weapons, striking their target, and some sort of hooks attach to Jeremy’s body, to a leg, and to his chest, ropes yanking him down and onto his knees with the impact.

Jeremy snarls, the sound is not animal or man, not anything I’ve ever heard. It echoes—two voices, not one—and climbs inside me and twists, sharp and cutting in its intensity. He isn’t dead, as I’d hoped, though I am not sure I’d call Jeremy alive, either.

Jeremy’s inky black eyes seem to expand and find me. “So glad we could play together, Ember. I’ve missed you.” He laughs that devil’s song again, and now the men who launched on him fall to their knees, both gasping for air as if attacked by some invisible force.

Micah captures my arm. “Let’s go.”

But I can’t move because of the shooting pain in my scalp. Somehow, even with Micah touching me and attempting to shield my mind from Jeremy’s influence, Jeremy still holds my mind in a crushing grip. And I can hear him. I can hear Jeremy talking to me in my mind. Running away will be painful, Ember. You will stay by my side where you belong, he commands, and a second wave of pain shoots through my body, all but rattling my bones. I fall to my knees, and Micah goes down with me, beside me. On some level, I’m certain that his collapse is the definition of the word screwed in any dictionary. Jeremy is controlling us, driving us to destruction.

Only Micah isn’t down because he’s in pain. Micah is with me, here for me. He grabs my shoulders and drags our foreheads together. “Breathe through the pain,” he orders. “You’re strong enough.”

“I’m not…like you,” I pant out.

“You’re stronger. You just don’t know it yet.”

Gunfire explodes, and Jeremy roars again. I can feel Micah using the distraction, pushing into my mind. He breaks Jeremy’s hold on me, the splintering through my head lessening. Micah must feel it, too. He releases me and heaves himself to his feet.

“You’re writing your own death sentence, Crystal Seer,” Jeremy hisses at Micah, who ignores him and hikes me to my feet—something I know only because I’m standing, though I can no longer feel my extremities. I’m numb, frozen to the bone. Whatever filter I had protecting me from this knowledge is now gone.

Micah drags me into a run toward the snowmobiles, and I stumble. I really can’t feel my feet. He catches my waist, anchoring me against him, and we never miss a step. We’re directly beside Jeremy now, and impossibly, I feel him shove himself into my mind again and sliver about, and suddenly, I’m reliving that moment when his tongue slid over my cheek.

I can’t breathe, and then he’s just…gone.

I glance over my shoulder, and we’re behind him now, and I wonder if this works in our favor, perhaps misdirecting his magic.

Jeremy laughs, and it snakes through the air in our wake, the sound echoing inhumanly, evilly, as he proclaims, “I’m going to enjoy watching her kill you. You and all your pathetically weak cronies.”

I don’t know if he means me or Micah, and it doesn’t matter. He’s still not dying today. That much is vividly clear. This isn’t over, but at least for now, we’ve reached the snowmobile, and Micah straddles the seat. I don’t have to be told to follow. The minute I’m behind him, he pulls my arms forward and shows me a handle on each side of him. I grab them, and he shouts, “Hold on.”

It’s a warning of the wild ride to come, I have no doubt, but I’ve never been so cold and so relieved in my life as I am the instant Micah shoots us into action. Still, I cast one last furtive look over my shoulder, assuring myself Jeremy can’t follow. I don’t find what I’d hoped to find, whatever that might be. The anchors are lying in the snow, and so are the men who’d shot them. Jeremy is gone. My gaze jerks everywhere and anywhere, frantic to find him, to know if he’s coming after us, but Micah launches the snowmobile off the road and into the wooded, snowy terrain. The jolting movement slides me to the left. I scream, and Micah reaches behind him, grabs my arm, and pulls me back onto the seat.

To heck with looking behind me and to heck with cautiously holding these stupid handles. I fling myself forward and press myself against this stranger, who I am suddenly becoming more intimate with. But at least for now, he is safe, and his body heat is warm where I am cold. I don’t bury my face in his jacket, thankful the snow has stopped falling, though the wind is still wicked. Its surface lashes, biting at my skin like little shards of glass.

The dull hum of engines roaring behind us permeates the wind’s guttural howls, telling me we aren’t alone. It’s Micah’s men. I feel this. I sense this. I also sense that many are fighting for their lives. I don’t know if the men by the anchors will live to see tomorrow, and I want to go back to save them, but we do nothing but push forward.

The Sacred Book of Nephilim

The connection between Angel warrior and Nephilim is a magic few will truly understand. In it, deja vu becomes an illusion of memory, a past that you must question as your own or that of the angel from which you descend.

Chapter eleven

Idon’t feel his men anymore, and I pray it’s distance, not death.

We arrive at the edge of the highway after what feels like hours in the bitter cold but was probably only a few minutes. Micah cuts us onto the pavement and barrels toward an eighteen-wheeler sitting in the emergency lane, the door open. Micah launches the snowmobile up the ramp, and then we’re under shelter, blessedly out of the winter elements. The instant we clear the door, lights flicker on, and by the time my gaze reaches behind us to find no one has followed, the door is shut. Another second later, the truck sways and begins to move.

With energy I wouldn’t have believed I possessed at this point, I scramble off the seat, preparing for confrontation. I have no idea who this man is, if I can really trust him, or what he wants from me.

He slicks his wet hair away from his face and dismounts the snowmobile with agility no one should possess after the arctic travel we’ve endured. And when he turns to face me, I’m again struck by his predatory grace, a panther always on the hunt for prey. Brutality beneath his surface as raw as his masculinity.

I oddly find myself drawn to that part of him, and I am terrified. “Who are you, and where are we going?”

“Micah Amor,” he says simply, as if the equally simple name explains everything when it explains nothing. He walks to the corner of the truck and flips a switch. Heating elements glow to life around the floorboards. “Take your wet coat off,” he directs, opening a long, wooden cabinet attached to the wall. “You’ll never warm up with it on.”

He’s right. It’s heavy and cold, but I really don’t care right now. I need to know things. I need to know everything. “Why were you at that coffee shop? Who are you?” I repeat.

He abandons the cabinet to face me again. “I told you. I’m Micah—”