Page 108 of Prodigal Son

“How about you?”

A waiter dropped off a basket of bread and they each took a piece. “I worked on my EP.”

“EP? Is that a computer thing?”

He grinned. He had a sweet smile with a good set of dimples. “No, EP stands for Emergency Pack.”

“Emergency Pack?”

“Yeah, you know, for the apocalypse.”

Destiny stilled, her glass half tilted toward her mouth. “You’re kidding.”

“Oh, no. Prophets have been predicting the end for years.” Negative one point. “I plan to be completely prepared. Fallout shelter and everything.” Negative two. “I have rooms filled with rations. Enough for two, actually.” He winked. Negative three.

She chugged her wine and snagged the waitress walking by and asked for another. Eric went on. “I have an entire storage unit filled with water and first aid.” Dear God, negative four.

The waitress delivered her wine and she chugged as Eric went on and on and on. Somewhere around negative eleven, she said, “You know what? I’m not feeling too great. Do you think we could do this another time?”

Eric looked terrified. “Do you think it’s the water? It’s probably tap and you drank a few sips. You know, they say that’s how it might happen, through the water.”

“They?”

He nodded, a severe look marring his once attractive face. “The spies.”

She opened her mouth and shut it. Her cash went on the table. “Yeah. I gotta go.”

And that was how she ended up at home on her couch involved in a very raunchy threesome with two men named Ben and Jerry.

CHAPTER 32

A dull haze pressed through the dreary rain pelting Cain’s bedroom window. Despite the busy rhythm of spring on the farm, his days were mostly met with long hours of solitude, and his evenings were saved for sleepless hours of regret passed down at the safe house.

Hearing the movement throughout the house, he swallowed back his grief and shut his eyes. The sound of nearby laughter triggered images of Destiny laughing and smiling in his arms, then falling apart and growing deathly afraid of him in the blink of an eye.

It had been months since she left and the rain never ceased. He wasn’t sure it ever would.

His attention snapped to the door as someone softly scratched. “Cain?”

Gracie. She’d gone from condemning him to being over the top concerned for him. “Go away.”

“I brought you a tray of food. You need to eat.”

He needed to be left the hell alone. “I said go away.”

The rattle of dishes told him she’d left the tray by the door. She did so every night until she took it away the next morning.

Turning to his back, he stared at the ceiling, savoring the soft prattle of rain until his eyes drifted shut. He drifted off and the babble faded. The rain only stopped when he slept. Of course, it did. He couldn’t dream, so he wouldn’t think of her in his sleep.

He awoke many hours later, the house quiet and everyone abed. Stepping around the tray in the hall, he ignored the food and made his way to the barn. His appetite betrayed him and he had no choice but to feed. The sheer act of meeting his needs sickened him. Everything about his nocturnal existence of late reminded him why he would spend an eternity alone.

He fed the way a drunk takes to drink—careless of the flavor and only meeting a shackling need. When he finished, he walked through the rain to the safe house.

Cybil, like the others, followed a natural vespertine clock and typically rose after dusk. The Elders used her body’s natural rhythms to perform their tests and extract her blood, but they discovered no new information about her state. She was still as lost and gone as she’d been the day the bull killed her, the day he intercepted any chance of her soul ever finding peace.

“Cybil,” he greeted and she eyed him from under a mess of blonde tangles through demonic, distrusting eyes. “You’ve made a mess.”

Blood smeared on the corridor wall, just across from her cell bars where a large crack marked the plaster, matted with hair.

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