Chapter 34
“No!” How many times did she need to repeat herself? Jasper wasn’t hearing her and had gone full-blown alpha-guardian-angel-controlling-asshole!
The cops had detained everyone not injured until the last person had been interviewed. They’d all said pretty much the same thing… A giant burst of blinding white light had originated from the bleachers near the press box and then chaos. The fire department’s investigative team had arrived at first light to look for clues as to how the fire had erupted. They wouldn’t find anything; Savannah knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. There had been no arson, no lit cigarette tossed onto dry hay had sparked a fire, and no flammable liquids carelessly discarded in a trashcan with someone’s cigarette butt.
Not only had she started the fire. She’d been the fire.
The only reason the cops had kept her longer than most to question was because she had been at ground zero from where the flames erupted but hadn’t had so much as a scratch or burn mark on her body or clothes while everyone around had been scorched to a crisp.
To make matters worse, the vet—Doc something-or-other—had delivered the devastating news about Baretta. Savannah couldn’t feel any worse than she did in that moment. Her beloved Baretta!
And it was her own fault. Two dead. Eighteen injured.
Jasper could try to spin the tale a million different ways, it didn’t change the outcome. He’d first blamed himself saying some garbage about he should’ve known cause he’s a damned guardian. She’d smacked him so hard across the face, her palm still stung. Then he’d blamed Manea.
Well, she was sick and damned tired of blaming others, even her psycho goddess mother trying to possess her body. Blaming others made her a victim, molding her into the damsel in distress she so despised.
She was no victim…no damsel in distress.
At least, not anymore.
“No! I refuse to not accept responsibility for this. My actions, Jasper, my actions killed two people tonight and maybe more. And…”—her voice cracked—“Baretta!” She wailed; the force of her sorrow shook the foundation of the cabin.
Jasper attempted to wrap her in his arms, but the thought of being comforted poured more fuel into the emotional fire raging in her soul. She knew she barely had control now. To succumb to her sorrow would only leave open the door for Manea to waltz through and destroy everything.
She needed to regain control and she needed to do so right now!
“Sweetheart—” Jasper tried to speak.
“I know you’re worried about hurting me, hurting the baby, but we have to exorcise Manea now before she…before I do more damage. I don’t want to risk the baby either, but I will not sit idly by while someone else pulls the strings in my body. That bitch, Manea, must die for good this time.”
***
Jasper’s hand raked through his jet-black locks that had grown so much longer than he normally dared to wear it. He’d been worried before, but this…this was abject, brutal, paralyzing fear. The cold of it coursed through his veins while igniting a river of lava to roil in his gut.
Helpless. That was the emotion he hadn’t wanted to name, the emotion he hadn’t truly experienced since that day Manea had cut him down in the prime of his human life. He was helpless to protect anyone anymore. That was his damn job! What he’d done for centuries! Protecting humans from their own inner demons and the more nefarious real ones. He was the best of the best! Now faced with needing to save the woman he loved and his unborn child, Jasper was staring down both types of evil: the inner demons within his own soul and the very real one—okay, goddess or whatever the hell she called herself—currently residing in Savannah.
Helpless was one emotion he’d thought banished forever. He didn’t enjoy the way it creeped in and shredded every ounce of his confidence.
He couldn’t help anyone. He needed help.
The revelation smacked him upside the head harder than Savannah’s slap.
He groaned, patting his pants pockets for his phone. He risked a glance at Savannah. Tears streamed down her face, her complexion splotchy, and unseeing eyes swollen from continuous crying. Her arms wrapped across her torso, over her belly bump, and she rocked side to side.
“It’s going to be okay.” He detested the waver in his voice. “I know someone who can help, or at least, he better damn do it or I’ll rip him apart like I should’ve done centuries ago,” he muttered while his thumb flicked through his contacts list before finding the name he sought.
Thomas Moorefield, III
The bastard owed him. Jasper couldn’t forgive or forget what the good professor had done to Greylyn just like he couldn’t forgive himself for his own betrayal of the best friend he had never deserved.
***
Thankfully, Thomas picked up the phone after half a ring. “Hello.” His voice had been timid, he probably expected Jasper to reach through the phone and rip his throat out.
Thomas had withheld crucial information from him and his pal and guardian angel mentee, Greylyn. Not only that, but he’d also outright lied. He wasn’t just a former Aussie rugby player turned all-things-supernatural-and-occult professor. He was a friggin’ scribe of God who’d not only prophesied all that Greylyn had endured, but he’d hidden all the information from Heaven, Hell, and most importantly from Greylyn herself. How she’d forgiven him, Jasper had no clue especially after the true bombshell had exploded—Thomas had attempted to thwart the prophecy he’d foretold by killing the chosen one herself, Greylyn, when she’d been human.
“Thomas.” Jasper’s mind raced with all the things he wanted to say but his mouth, lips, and tongue weren’t cooperating. Finally, he managed, “I need your help.” Four words had never been harder to push through his teeth, but once unleashed the rest flowed out like a river whose dam had burst.
At the end of his tirade, there was a long silence on the other end of the line. “Thomas, dude…you there? You owe me!”
The former scribe/Rugby player/professor cleared his throat at least a dozen times before answering. “I am so sorry—”
“Cut the pity party. Not interested. Can you or can you not help us?” Jasper growled.
“I… I believe so,” Thomas stammered. “Actually, it’s kind of funny in a way.”
“Not seeing the humor here, buddy.” He glanced over to see Savannah fall back on the bed, one hand cradling her belly and the other thrown over her eyes.
“Not ha-ha funny. That’s not what I meant.”
Jasper paced at the end of the bed, absentmindedly raking his hand through his hair. “Out with it then.” He didn’t care if he sounded like a snippy teenager.
“Well, there’s this…”
“What?” Jasper swore if Thomas didn’t spit it out, he’d reach through the phone and throttle him.
“A… a prophecy.”
Oh, fuck!
“Nope. Nope. No more prophecy bull shit! Especially not from you!” His arm reared back to throw the phone across the room, but his gaze locked on Savannah. He had to do whatever it took to protect her, to save her and their child. “What prophecy?” he bit out.
“The headaches started shortly after Greylyn returned from the dead… again.”
“Buddy, you’re lucky she did. Otherwise, Kael and I would’ve filleted you and served your tasty morsels to the Faoladh.”
“Yes, yes. And I am eternally grateful for that. I can never make up—”
“Thomas, no time to go down that path. What prophecy?”
“I don’t have all the details, just snatches of images and words here and there, but I’m relatively sure this applies to your lady and the child in particular.”
Double fuck!
“Tell me everything.”
Another, more feminine voice came over the phone’s speaker. With that adorable Irish brogue lilt, it could only be Thomas’s new girlfriend, Maeve. She’d been instrumental in figuring things out with Greylyn’s prophecy. It hadn’t hurt she was a librarian at the Trinity College Library in Dublin but also was a white witch. “Tell him about…”
“I’m getting to that, honey.”
If Jasper wasn’t so desperate and still holding a grudge, he would’ve found it comical that the bumbling professor had such a smoking hot lady. He didn’t deserve her.
“By the way, Maeve sends her regards, and she believes she can help with Savannah’s blindness, but she can’t work her mojo from here. They’d need to be in the same room.”
Jasper stopped pacing and Savannah bolted up from the bed.
“She can do what?” they spoke simultaneously.
Maeve’s voice came over the phone. “I’m not one hundred percent certain it will work being as your lady love has a goddess in her, but it does work on those possessed by demons. I’ll see if I can tweak the spell a wee bit while we pack up. I’ve already booked our flight to Bozeman. We’ll land tomorrow evening around four o’clock.”
Wow! She really was a get-to-it type of gal.
And could prove to be the answer to his prayers.
Thomas’s Aussie accent came through weakly. “Honey, please give me the phone. I need to explain…”
“Here then. Please tell Savannah to hang on tight. The cavalry is coming.”