Chapter Thirty-Eight
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VICTORIA WOKE UP AT dawn with the birds, since they were so damn noisy.
“Did I really dream about Camriel last night?” she asked the empty room as she sat up.
She’d dreamed she was in his bedroom. He’d stared into her eyes and had cupped her cheek, then had apologized sincerely.
It had been kind of sweet and she suspected she’d been astral projecting again.
“If that’s what I do,” she said, still unconvinced.
This dream had been different from usual.
She hadn’t dreamed about an event that had already occurred, but about something that had been happening at that moment.
Or so she figured. She would have to ask Cam if she’d just hallucinated it.
“When I eventually fudging forgive him enough to talk to him again,” she muttered.
The knight’s stupid antics were still too raw to contemplate speaking to him anytime soon.
She ate breakfast, drank it down with coffee and read a book until it was time to leave. Her short hair stuck up all over the place. Hair products weren’t something she’d bothered to take from the store. It wasn’t like she’d expected to run into anyone on the remote mountain.
Vic was relieved to find Camriel was gone when she reached the stone structure on the far side of the lake. “Where are the guys?” she asked when Zoe and Grace met her at the back entrance.
“We told them about your shower and they went to the resort to steal some stuff for us so we can duplicate it,” Grace replied. “Are you ready to learn how to drive?” she added.
“Abso-fudging-lutely,” Vic said with a grin. “It was a bit scary driving Cam’s big truck all by myself.”
“You’re lucky it’s an automatic,” Zoe told her. “I’ve heard stick shift is a lot harder to master.”
“Do they still even make those?” Grace asked, wrinkling her nose.
Zoe snickered and stopped in the kitchen briefly. “We thought it would be a good idea to take a thermos of coffee and some snacks,” she said, grabbing a backpack with the items pre-packed.
“You’re a goddess,” Victoria said, mentally smacking herself upside the head for not thinking of it as well.
“We put your weapons in our little red truck,” Grace told her when they headed for the front doorway.
“I can’t believe I forgot to take them home yesterday,” Victoria said, taking the keys the kid handed to her.
“You were a bit flustered,” Zoe reminded her.
Grace nodded solemnly, stopping beside the truck. “I mean, Cam did try to ravage you while he was wearing the godawful purple suit and stupid ruffled blue blouse.”
The cambions all cracked up, laughing so hard they had to wipe tears away. He thought you two were so moved at how romantic he was that you were crying,” Vic told them.
Grace cackled again and Zoe had to lean against the truck for support. “He’s so utterly clueless, but thinks he’s Romeo,” Zoe said once she’d regained control.
“Okay, in you get,” Grace said, indicating the driver’s door, still giggling a bit. She got into the back and slid over to sit between the front seats.
Zoe and Grace gave their new friend a tutorial on how to adjust her seat, mirrors and the basics of how to drive.
The wrestler had already figured most of it out, but listened intently anyway.
She slowly and cautiously drove past the first boulder, glad it had been moved from its original position.
Her confidence surged after she swung around the second boulder next to the road.
“Don’t drive too fast,” Zoe warned her when she picked up speed. “There are a lot of fallen rocks and some landslides ahead.” From the scrape marks on the asphalt, some of the larger debris had been moved. They must have used their bulldozer.
Vic slowed down again, hands gripping the steering wheel tightly.
“Try the radio,” Grace suggested. “The Mad Prophet might be on the air.”
Sure enough, his familiar voice was speaking when Zoe switched it on. “More comets will be coming,” he predicted, voice both mesmerizing and on the verge of insanity. “War is on its way, folks. It won’t be waged by us puny humans, but by beings from another world.”
“He knows about the aliens?” Victoria asked as the prophet ended his rant.
“We’re not sure what he knows,” Zoe said, switching the radio off again since there was only static now. “He only talks for a short time and it’s usually about the Soldiers of Chaos, not that he knows that’s what they’re called.”
“This is the first time he’s mentioned our knights,” Grace said.
They discussed what they’d heard the prophet say and how he could know about any of them at all. No one had the answers. They didn’t know where he was so they could talk to him about his prophecies.
“Okay, we need to be on full alert now,” Victoria said when they reached the quaint town. It had taken a couple of hours to reach it going by road, since they had to take the long way around.
“We were attacked the last time we looted some books from here,” Grace said. “Amaros and Cam took care of the threat.”
“At least we have weapons this time,” Zoe said, holding her pistol up. Grace had the compound bow in the back seat. The wicked sickle was resting on the floor at Zoe’s feet.
Victoria had the hang of driving by now. She coasted to a stop, then swung the truck around to face the way home, parking right outside the store. “I need to grab a few things from a convenience store before we leave,” she said, gesturing at the closest store just down the road.
“No problem,” Zoe agreed, climbing out and grabbing the reaping hook. She handed it to the wrestler and the trio headed inside.
“They’re all mine,” Grace gloated, turning in a circle to examine the shelves that were still untouched by looters. She and Zoe had only taken a fraction of the tomes that were on offer.
“Hello, what are we?” Victoria joked, pointing at Zoe and herself.
“You may borrow books from my collection,” the teen said in a mock regal tone. “As long as you promise to return them,” she added.
Zoe rolled her eyes, then started browsing through the non-fiction books. The other two started loading up the truck with predominantly romance books. Victoria paused to examine a novel. A handsome, shirtless man with a ripped body was on the cover. She flipped it over to read the back cover.
“What’s the book about?” Grace asked, nudging Zoe to get her to start helping rather than browsing.
“It’s about an alien warrior who’s sent to Earth to find his fated mate,” Vic said.
“You’re kidding,” Zoe said.
“Nope,” the wrestler replied. “There’s a whole series of them,” she added, nodding at the shelf she’d taken the book from. “There’s twenty in total.”
“I’ve got to read these,” Grace said with a grin. “I can’t wait to see how close they come to our situation.”
“They’re all yours,” Victoria said, tossing the paperback to the teen. She didn’t want any spoilers to ruin her rocky romance with Camriel.
It was a tight fit, but they managed to get all of the books into the truck. They tied tarps over them so they wouldn’t fly out when they got back on the freeway.
“Do you hear that?” Zoe asked when she heard a distant noise.
“It’s a car,” Vic said, instinctively reaching for her sickle.
“We should hide and hope they drive through the town,” Grace suggested.
They hurried back into the bookstore and closed the door. It was too dark for humans to see inside, but they stayed back from the windows next to the door anyway.
“They’re slowing down,” Zoe said, clutching her pistol tightly.
Victoria moved closer to the window and kept her back to some bookshelves to peer outside. “They’re stopping,” she said with a scowl.
A large white truck parked across the road and eight men climbed out. Four of them had been riding in the bed. She could tell they were drunk by the way they were weaving on their feet. They were all armed with guns.
“This wasn’t here the last time we came through,” the driver and oldest one said as he examined the red truck.
His huge beer belly strained against his stained sweater.
A long, scraggly gray beard did nothing to make him more attractive.
He peered around, then zeroed in on the store.
“Someone’s in there,” he said, voice slurring slightly.
“Shiz,” Vic whispered. He hadn’t spotted her, but his instincts were dead on.
“Go around the back,” the guy said to four of his buddies. “Let’s see what we can flush out.”
Giggling in excitement, four of the younger, slimmer men broke off to head to the back of the store.
“Do exactly what I say and we might make it out of here alive,” Victoria whispered to her friends. Zoe and Grace nodded grimly, knowing the pro wrestler was far better at combat than they were.