Page 279 of Caelum

I guess it made sense. What with their mate glowing like fairy lights I’d seen in the Christmas movies and taking them on a day trip to meet Adam and Eve…

Because he wasn’t wrong, not technically, I nodded and began to climb the steps.

We were purposely quiet now as we approached the top of the temple, which was a kind of plateau. We weren’t sure where the Ghouls were supposed to be living in this damn place, which didn’t exactly make things easier for us.

The temple was on the tourist trail. Nothing as major as some of the other sites, but a busy place nonetheless. Today, it was a ghost town, and while that was to our benefit, it didn’t exactly help us blend in.

I was surprised that the Original had no guards here at all. Maybe he lived all alone in this temple?

Because that wasn’t creepy.

Not one bit.

Or were we safe from them because they were hidden within the ancient ruin?

Just as creepy.

The second I stepped onto the plateau where the soldiers stood guard, I eyed them warily. That feeling of connection hit me once more as I stared at the stylized bodies of the Toltec warriors.

They each wore a headdress and had a stern expression chiseled onto their faces. They had boots and a belt with a kind of, what I could only call, stone kilt, and then on their chests, the emblem of Quetzalcoatl—a fierce serpent with a kind of feathered mane.

They were beyond spooky because their determination was evident.

And only I seemed to sense that.

I wasn’t saying that everyone believed them to be decorative, but I felt their purpose. Sure, it was to protect the temple, but more than that, it was to do what had to be done to defend their deity. And as that resonated with me, I realized how truly disgraceful it was that Raum had infiltrated this place and had made it his home.

As though they were living breathing creatures, I sensed the soldiers’ disgust, their desire to cleanse the temple that was theirs to guard for an eternity…

The overwhelming thoughts swirled around my head as I stepped toward them. They towered over me, over twice my height as I peered up at their stern visages, rubbing my fingers over where I could reach, needing to physically connect with them in a way I couldn’t explain.

When I reached the fourth one, I turned around and saw the land ahead.

The temple stood on four levels, each built up with rounded, oblong bricks that had supported these soldiers for several hundred lifetimes. Ahead, I could see columns that had been shorn down to thigh-height, and that spoke of a community of buildings that had once stood here. I could see more foundations, a lot of the parched grass and dusty white paths, then, in the distance, a mountain and some of the city beyond.

“Eve?” Reed asked, his voice quiet but, in this dead space where there was no noise from anything, not the crowds of humanity who should be here to visit this ruin, or even a car engine or a plane rumbling overhead, it was loud. So loud, I flinched.

Turning to him, I stared at all my mates, saw their confusion, their wariness as they stared at me then the soldiers.

It was one thing to theorize, but to stand here now?

There was a purpose here.

As I moved back toward the center of the plateau, I sucked down a breath and stated, “Make a wish.”

TWENTY-ONE

FRAZER

I swallowed at her words, sensing the change that had overtaken Eve and disturbed us all. She was no longer the girl who relied upon her mates to understand the most basic of human interactions in the modern world. No longer a woman who had no idea what a credit card was and how something as simple as a parking meter worked.

No, theJannahwas here. I felt it. Felther. And though it excited the Sin Eater deep inside me, it scared the man because the man wanted Eve. Not the part of her that was other.

At her words, though, Eve’s mates cast each other a wary glance before inhaling and, on a silent, one, two, three, declared:

“We wish…”

“...for…”

---