River

It has been thirteen years since the war started, the bombs were dropped, and the central states became a thing of the past. When the war ended, a wall was erected to divide the surviving states from those destroyed. I never expected to go beyond the wall, but unlike all the others who volunteered to go, I wasn’t given a choice.

With a dim knowledge of what I could do, the soldiers came for me. They took me beyond the wall where I learned that the truth is far more terrifying than I’d ever dreamed. Alone, with humans and demons seeking to learn what it is I can do, I find myself irresistibly drawn to the one man I should be avoiding most. One who intrigues and infuriates me. One who is not even a man, not really.

Kobal

My entire life, I’ve had only one mission, reclaim my throne from Lucifer and put right everything that was torn apart when he was cast from Heaven. It’s a mission I haven’t wavered from, not even when the humans tore open the gates and unleashed Hell on Earth.

Now, I’ve never been closer to obtaining my goal, yet I find myself risking it all because I cannot stay away from her, a human who may be the key to it all.

*** There are four books in this paranormal romance series which is now complete. Not all things will be resolved in this book. Due to sexual content, violence, and language, this book is recommended for readers 18+ years of age.***

Prologue

River

I was nine when the first of the fighter planes flew over thirteen years ago. I remember tilting my head back to stare at them as they moved over us in a V formation. Excitement buzzed through me, but I felt no fear. They had been a more common sight before the military base closed last year; despite that status, they still occasionally flew over our town.

When the planes vanished from view, I turned my attention back to the game of hopscotch I was playing with my friend, Lisa. I was about to beat her, and I wanted to finish before Mother woke from her nap and called me away. Lisa stared at the sky for a minute more before turning her attention back to me. She bent to pick up the rock on the ground as four more planes flew over us in a tight formation. They left white streaks in the sky as their engines roared over us.

The rock Lisa had picked up slid from her fingers and clattered onto the asphalt. Together, we watched as the second wave of them disappeared from view. I don’t know why the initial wave hadn’t bothered me, but the second wave caused a cold sweat to trickle down my neck.

Following the noise of the planes, the world around us took on an unusual hush for a Saturday afternoon in July. Normally there were shouts from kids playing up and down the street. The rumble of cars driving down the highway, heading toward the beach, was a near constant background noise now that tourist season was in full swing.

Turning my attention back to Lisa, I waited for her to pick her rock up again and continue, but she remained staring at the sky. The planes had unnerved me, but what did I really know? At that point in my young life, my biggest problem was napping in the house a hundred feet away from me. I hoped their noise hadn’t woken Mother; grouchy was a permanent state for her, but when she was woken from a nap, she could be a real bear.

I glanced over at my one-year-old brother, Gage. My heart melted at the sight of his disheveled blond hair sticking up in spikes and his warm brown eyes staring at the sky. He lifted a fist and waved at the planes fading from view. His coloring was completely different from my raven hair and violet eyes, due to our different fathers. Mine had taken off before I was born; Gage’s father had at least stuck around to see his birth before leaving our mother in the dust.

Turning his attention away from the sky, Gage held his arms toward me before shoving a hand into his mouth. Unable to resist him, I walked over and lifted him off the ground. I cradled his warm body in my arms. I always brought him with me during Mother’s naps so he wouldn’t wake her, and because I couldn’t stand him being alone in the house while she slept. I’d been alone so many times before he’d come along that I refused to let him be too.

Gage wrapped his chubby arms around my neck, pressing his sweaty body against mine. Lisa wiped the sweat from her brow and brushed aside the strands of brown hair sticking to her face. Waves of heat wafted from the cooking asphalt, but I barely felt it. I’d always preferred summer to winter and tolerated the heat better than most others.

Six more planes swept overhead, leaving a loud, reverberating boom in their wake as they sped by. Car alarms up and down the street blared loudly. Horns honking in quick succession, and headlights flashing had all the dogs in the neighborhood barking. The relatively peaceful day had become chaotic in the blink of an eye.

Along the road, doors opened and beeps sounded as people turned off their alarms. Shouts for the dogs to be quiet could be heard over the noise of the vehicles. Some people ran out of their homes and toward the squealing cars to try and turn off the alarms that wouldn’t be silenced.

Gage’s arm tightened around my neck to the point of near choking. I didn’t try to pull him away; instead I held him closer when he began to shake. Then just as rapidly as the rush of noise had erupted on the street, everything went completely still. Even the dogs, sensing something was off, became almost simultaneously silent. The few birds that had been chirping stopped their song; they seemed to be holding their breath with the rest of the world.

I remember Lisa stepping closer to me. Years later, I can still feel her warm arm against mine in a moment of much needed solidarity. “What’s going on, River?” she asked me.

“I don’t know.”

Then, from inside some of the nearby homes, screams and cries erupted, breaking the near silence. Exchanging a look with Lisa, we turned as one and ran toward her house. We clambered up the steps, jostling against each other in our rush to see what was going on. We’d scarcely entered the cool shadows of her screened-in porch when I heard the sobs of her mother.

We both froze, uncertain of what to do. Tears streaked Gage’s cheeks and wet my shirt when he buried his face in my neck. He may have only been a baby, but he still sensed something was completely wrong.

Instinctively knowing we would be shut out of whatever was going on if we alerted them to our presence, it had to be grown-up stuff after all, we’d edged carefully over to the windows, looking in on the living room. Peering in the windows, I spotted Lisa’s mom on the couch, her head in her hands as she wept openly. Lisa’s father stood before the TV, the remote dangling from his fingertips as he gaped at the screen.

My eyes were drawn to the TV; my brow creased in curious wonder at the mushroom cloud I saw rising from the earth. A black cloud of rolling fire and smoke covered the entire horizon on the screen.

Beneath the cloud, words ran across the bottom of the screen. The U.S. is under attack. Nuclear bomb dropped on Kansas. Possible terrorist attack. Possible attack from China or Russia. Numerous areas of reported violence erupting.

“It’s World War III,” Lisa’s father said as the remote fell from his hand and her mother sobbed harder.

My heart raced in my chest, and my throat went dry as I struggled to grasp what was going on. I knew something awful had happened, but I still couldn’t understand what. How could I? I was a child. My time on this earth had been spent trying to avoid my mother as much as possible. It had also been filled with taking care of my brother, friends, TV, books, school, and the endless days of summer, that until then, I’d been so looking forward to.

I hugged Gage as I vowed to do anything I could to keep him safe from whatever was about to unfold.

Standing there with Lisa, I may not have completely understood what was happening, but I knew nothing would ever be the same again. The only world I’d ever known was now entirely different.

The cries and shouts in the neighborhood increased in intensity when more planes flew overhead with a loud whoosh that rattled the glass in the windows before us and set off some of the alarms again. Turning, I glanced back at the street to find some people running back and forth, hugging each other before running toward another house. Some got in their cars and drove away with a squeal of tires. Much like a chicken with its head cut off, they were unsure of where to go or what to do.

What could anyone possibly do? Were we next for the bombs? The hair on my nape rose.

I turned back to the TV and watched as the cloud continued to rise. More words flashed by on the bottom of the screen, but I barely saw them. I became so focused on the TV, I never heard my mother enter the porch until one of her hands fell on my shoulder.

Tilting my head back to look at her, I realized it must be worse than I ever could have imagined if she was touching me. It was the first time she’d touched me in a comforting way in years. It would be the last, that wasn’t by accident or in anger, for all the years following.

“What is happening?” Lisa inquired in a tremulous whisper.

“The end,” Mother replied.

I wouldn’t know how right she was until years later.