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I’ve followed your calling to Texas,I send out to the Working.Where next? Due south to Lubbock or Midland? Southeast to Dallas/Fort Worth? Further southeast to Austin or Houston? Give me something,I plead.A city to aim for. A compass heading. Hell, I’ll even take a direction. Left or right? Get off Highway 87 or stay on. Something. Anything.
But this isn’t how I usually get my Knowings. They come to me when I’m relaxed, when I’m lying down for the night and all is quiet, when I can listen with all my senses. I’ve never been able to force a Knowing. Not sure why I thought this moment would be any different.
Exhaling a long breath, I shake out my hands and roll my neck. I try to unfocus my mind. But when I do, all I see is my razor-sharp memory of Scrap’s tanned, tattooed back in front of me and Cora’s pleasure-drunk face beyond his shoulder as I plow into both of them.
My babies.
Christ, last night was amazing!
Being with my two kiddos at the same time was a turn-on like no other. Just like I hoped, they played well together.So, sowell.
I allow myself to remember the feast that filled each one of my senses. Cora’s cozy bedroom smelled of kerosene, charred candle wicks, and sex. Scrap’s scent of car oil and clean sweat filled my nose as my palms caressed his inked back. Muscles moved under his smooth skin as I entered him, inch by delicious inch. His back tensed, relaxed, tensed again, then, at last, he melted for me, relinquishing all control. His head dropped, creating a kissable valley between youthful shoulder blades. His helpless groans joined with Cora’s cries and rose in a symphony of bliss, and I couldn’t hold back my own pleasure sounds. Animal grunts of conquest. Possession.
Their combined mass as I jostled both their nubile bodies with my thrusts was a double delight. I wouldn’t doubt it if Cora had some mild fabric burns from being rubbed so thoroughly into the bedding by Scrap’s weight and my fucking.
And the pleasure! Standing on the overpass, my balls tighten in my jeans as I remember howfuckinggood it felt squeezing my dick into Scrappy boy’s hot, tight hole and how he squeezed me back when I used my pelvis to shove him forward into our sweet baby girl.
It’s while I’m lost in memory, mentally in bed with my babies, that the vision hits me. I see our destination. It’s a two-story, log ranch house on several thousand acres of well-maintained cattle pasture. Then, in an instant, the vision zooms out like I’ve been yanked backwards through a tunnel. The house shrinks to a pin-point, and I see a ranch sign held aloft by two raw-log pillars announcing,Soldier Ranch.Then I’m yanked at lightning speed along a miles-long gravel road. Then past a turn-off from a two-lane country road, straight, like so many roads in Texas. Then around a freeway exit for a town called Eden. It’s disorienting doing this backwards, but I force myself to remember landmarks. There’s another exit. And another. And finally, a badge for US Highway 27, which begins right here in Amarillo.
Gotcha!
I pump my fist and whoop with victory. Arms spread in thanks, I shout, “The Working came through, boys! Let’s roll out!”
Chapter 1
Doc
Four hours andtwenty-seven minutes. That’s how long I’ve been behind Bessy’s wheel, leading our convoy with Rev riding shotgun beside me and Scrap fast asleep on the king-size sleeper behind our seats. The others, including Cora, are all in the missile truck or the Humvee. Whoever’s not driving is probably sleeping like Scrap. It’s still a couple hours until dawn.
Bessy is a tractor trailer sitting high on eighteen monster-truck wheels and sporting curling-horn smokestacks. She cuts through obstacles with her sharpened steel cowcatcher, not that there’s much to plow out of the way. During Week Zero, most people either hunkered down to ride out the fever in their homes or they waited in line for a cot in one of the thousands of treatment tents set up near hospitals. The occasional traffic jam of abandoned cars on the roads resulted from accidents that first responders never made it to because they were so overloaded with Virus patients. Those jumbles of vehicles are mostly in the towns, not on the freeways. Still, there are plenty of obstacles, like downed power lines and overgrown plant life, to give Ole Bessy something to muscle out of the way for us.
“Take this,” Rev tells me, pointing to the upcoming exit. The lights from the dash make harsh lines of his craggy face. His crazy-ass gaze bores a hole through the windshield as he studies our surroundings. Not that there’s much to see. Texas is as flat as ever, and in the dark, one abandoned thousand-acre pasture looks like the next.
I downshift and do as I’m told. With Jud in the enemy’s hands, Rev’s in charge. I might not always agree with him, but then, I don’t get visions from the Working. All I know is this detour to Texas better be worth the time it’s taking. Every mile that doesn’t bring us closer to rescuing Jud takes a toll on me. And not just me. We’re all worried about our leader.
We’ve been violated. By a power-hungry asshole who thinks he’s entitled to our woman. He sent his bird spies, invaded our territory, and upended our lives just when things were starting to get good. Just when we found our Heart.
Cora.
MyChér.
Rage flares in my chest while I turn Bessy’s wheel, hand over hand to follow the curve of the exit ramp. If I were in charge, I would have locked Cora in the bomb shelter deep in our mountain while we rescued Jud. But no. Thanks to Rev, she’s on the road with us, sitting in the missile truck with Grim at the helm. Exposed out here on the road with nothing but bullet-proof steel and six supernaturally Gifted men, including the literal embodiment of Death, to protect her.
Okay, she’s pretty damn safe. For now. But how we’ll keep her that way once we reach Raptor’s headquarters in New Orleans, I have no idea.
Rev argued that Cora makes our Gifts stronger. That’s why she’s coming along with us. Judging by the sound ass-whipping we endured because of Gifts on Raptor’s end, we need all the strengthening we can get. But at what risk?
If we lose Cora, the only female survivor any of us have seen, everything is lost.
If we lose Cora, the sweetest, sexiest, most perfect woman that ever existed,Iwill have nothing left to live for. Neither will the others. For two years, Rev’s assurance that our Heart would come to us kept us all going. Now that we have her, all we want is to enjoy her. We want to revel in her. Day and night, separately and together. We want to “revel” in every imaginable position multiple times, if you catch my drift. And we want to make babies with her. I mean, the world isn’t going to repopulate itself.
Instead, we have to fight for her. It’s our duty and pleasure to do so, but not one of us would have chosen this shit over the peaceful existence we got to enjoy for a couple blissful weeks after she came into our lives.
“Are we there yet?” Scrap’s voice yanks me out of my head. I glance in the rearview to find him leaning on an elbow on the sleeper, digging his fists into his eye sockets.
“It’ll be a while yet, son,” Rev says. “Go back to sleep.” Despite his intense gaze roving over the dark landscape, his tone is gentle with Scrap. They’re lovers. We all knew it, but they kept it quiet. Until a few nights ago.
A few nights ago.
