Chapter Twenty-Eight

I sat at the kitchen table in the cabin with the bible open in front of me. After I reattached the three pages we’d found, along with the ones the other teams had recovered, another flash lit up my eyes, and a sense of urgency grew in me. I still couldn’t get any visuals, only frustration that seemed to be coming from the book itself. Weird.

“There’s nothing here but what I already know,” I said to Caine, who leaned against the kitchen cupboards with a cup of tea in his hand. “Classes of wraiths, details about their world and Baku, a description of the Shepherd’s abilities, which might have been helpful a week ago. I don’t think I’ll be able to see whatever it wants to show me until we put the final page in.”

Caine seemed agitated, and when he didn’t say anything, I asked the questions building on my tongue. “So you were manipulating both Asher and me all along, knowing he was my Shepherd. I should knock your head in. First you try to suffocate me, you flirt like a two-dollar hooker, and then you bold-faced lie about you and me being together.”

He gave an elegant shrug. “Would you have believed me if I’d come right out and said Asher was your Shepherd?”

I thought about it. I’d always known Asher and I shared a physical attraction, but given the way he’d been acting, and his mystery girl I’d wanted to pound until I found out it was me…I wouldn’t have asked him to be my Shepherd, because I ultimately wanted him to be happy. “No, probably not. I needed those quiet moments when Asher was telling me what I needed to hear, even though I didn’t know he was talking about me.”

Gesturing to the book, Caine asked, “Do you feel any different with the new pages inserted?”

“No, not that I can tell, but I can sense stronger emotions that seem to be coming from the book. I think whatever it will show me will be the key to everything, but I need the last page. Which means it’s going to be a last-minute thing.”

“What do you mean? Don’t you know where it is?”

“Izan said Mom has it, so I guess I need to take the bible with us to our dragon mantis date at dawn and wing it from there. Now that the other pages have stopped trying to tear me apart, I can barely feel it out there. It keeps moving, so I can’t pin it down, or I’d go right this second to get her.” Thinking of Asher near that shithead of a wraith stuck a blade through my chest. “How can I let Asher come with me? I’ve finally found him, and in one way or another, I’m going to lose him. They do say the brightest flames burn out the fastest, so I guess there’s some truth to that.”

Caine set his cup on the counter, drew up a chair beside me, and sat down on it backward, his arms folded over the back of it. “Why do you think you’re going to lose him?”

I stared at him, uneasy for some reason. “Because Izan said I’d have to make a sacrifice to win this thing, but I’m not sure what it is yet. I was thinking about what you said about the other Architects, that their deaths made some sort of sonic boom. Now that I’m bonded with Asher, maybe that explosion will be big enough to trigger some sort of chain reaction that seals up the veil forever and somehow renders Baku useless. Hell, I don’t know. Izan said to follow my instincts, but they’re not giving me squat. Maybe it’s another of those have-to-feel-it deals I’ll figure out in the middle of the crisis.”

He studied me for seconds before speaking again, his lids at half mast. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“You keep saying that, but it does. I get that Izan’s people really messed things up, especially for us and Baku’s bugpeople, but we have to think about all of the other realities, too. If I give Baku what he wants, we’d live for now, but how long before some advanced world with energy guns and resource-sucking spaceships would come along and devour the planet, and not just ours, but other peaceful worlds like Baku’s was?”

“You don’t know that would happen. The only proof we have of the reason the founders tossed us into separate realities is Izan’s word, which is meaningless.” He seemed to realize he’d raised his voice, and sighed. “Please, consider writing your own future instead of the one Izan plans for you. At least think about it.”

“A one in a thousand possibility is too high of a risk.”

“Survival of the fittest. It’s the law of nature. If some planets fall, then so be it.”

“We’re practically infants compared to all the others. Who do you suppose is the lowest on the food chain here?”

His expression grew hard. “What would you do if it was Asher out there? How far would you go to bring him back?” Desperation rang in the words, and he pleaded with his jade-star eyes.

“Why is this so important to you, because it sounds personal to me? What aren’t you telling me, Caine? I want to help you, but I can’t restore the universe.”

Before he answered, Asher came through the front door. “Your dad’s in the infirmary out cold, but we should go right now. He’s feisty like his daughter, so it won’t be long until he comes around and wants to break a few skulls.” He smiled, and my heart kicked.

Caine got up and stretched, all traces of anxiety gone. “I think I’ll find a cabin across the lake. I’ve come to enjoy some degree of solitude.”

I stared after him as he left. Why would he be so affected by Baku’s plight to get back to the wife and children he lost in the separation? I didn’t even understand why the king was still looking for them. After all this time, they’d either be energy returned to the universe or wraiths like him. There had to be more to it, but it would have to wait until after I’d broken the news to Dad that his daughter was a demi-immortal guardian of the universe who hunted the dead for a living. Good times.