Page 70 of Caelum

ELEVEN

EVE

In my life, I’d experienced that sensation of ‘coming home’ far too few times to count. Honestly, that made me unhappy, but it also disturbed me on a visceral level that I felt it when Bartlett looked at me.

He didn’t sneer at me, didn’t look at me lewdly. There was great interest in his eyes, but there was also something that made me feel connected to him. Like he knew me already. Like I knew him.

“What are you?” I whispered, and I surprised Stefan by jerking out of his arms and pushing myself forward before any of my men could stop me.

They were all overprotective, and sometimes, I liked that. Sometimes, when that other side of my soul wasn’t in command, I needed that. But on occasions like these, where I felt on fire with the strangeness in me?

No.

I didn’t need protecting.

It was like my Supergirl persona kicked into high gear or something, and I had no other way of describing it because it was as perplexing as it sounded.

“What are you?” I repeated, but this time, I was so much closer to them. Avalina was unusual. I’d sensed that from the start. When they’d approached us at the ferry terminal, I’d known the pair were more than they seemed, but it was Bartlett who felt right to me.

Who felt like someone I needed to know.

With my repeated question, I aimed my focus at Bartlett, not Avalina. While I felt sure she had some answers to questions I might have, Bartlett was like me. The only trouble was, I wasn’t sure what I was, so how I knew that about him, I couldn’t say.

“We are the first.”

“The first?” Dre scoffed. “The first what?”

I blinked at his voice and realized then how quiet he’d been since we’d left the yacht. Heck, since that stupid kiss I’d instigated back in his cactus garden at Caelum. I knew he was flailing, trying to find his place, but we all were, and it wasn’t aided by him intentionally keeping his distance from me.

That needed to stop.

Now.

The thought was a roar in my head, and I gulped and tried to rein my feelings back in so I could focus. I didn’t need to be thinking about Dre when there was a man here who had answers to questions I’d never even thought about forming.

“The first of everything,” Bartlett murmured. My gaze drifted to his hands, which cupped his wife’s shoulders. I stared at the strong knuckles and the long fingers that were covered in youthful skin. There were no age spots, no wrinkles.

I glanced at his face, saw the lack of lines there too, and couldn’t stop myself from asking, “How old are you?”

“As old as time itself,” Avalina responded, drawing my attention her way.

I blinked at her. “What does that even mean?”

“Time is a relative concept,” Bartlett explained. “It matters only to humans. Animals register the ticking of the clock only in the passage of days. Of the sun rising and setting, the moon soaring and falling. To us, each moment counts, and that is how old we are.”

“Anyone else feel like they’re in a National Treasure movie?” Reed groused, but I ignored him even though the shuffling of feet behind me told me that the others were in a semblance of agreement.

“I think you should start from the beginning,” I whispered, staring straight into Bartlett’s eyes and not letting him hedge on this, not letting him shift focus.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” he intoned, his lips gently curving as he made the mocking statement. One I’d heard so many times over the years in Bible study back at the compound; one that resonated with me on a different level because of what he was saying.

“Wait,” I whispered, “You are the first of everything…” Shaking my head, I continued, “No. It can’t be.”

“Can’t be what?” Reed demanded, and he stormed over to me, coming to hold me as Bartlett held Avalina. Having him at my back was a welcome sensation, and it filled me with strength.

Bartlett tipped his head to the side as he cast a glance at the men in the room, then focused back on me. “Eve came first, not Adam,” he said matter-of-factly. “She was not born of my bone, but she was the life giver in more ways than she just helped bear the next generations.”

My throat felt thick. “Why are you telling us this?” I’d asked him to explain, but what he was saying made no sense.

“So, you understand, of course.” He pursed his lips. “I sensed you before. Sensed you when I was in the States a few months ago.” He laughed a little. “There are so few of us, and even though it puts us at risk of coming under Caelum’s umbrella, I had to help you.”

“What do you mean? You’re not working with Caelum?” Reed asked, tone insistent, his arms bunching as tension filled him. His Hell Hound was in full force at the moment, and while I could have soothed him, all my focus was on what Bartlett was telling me. What he wasn’t saying even though he was talking, spilling words that were couched in shadows when I needed the spotlight on the truth.

“No.” Avalina’s laugh was a small tinkle. “Though Nicholas is one of our sons.”

I could feel my mates’ bewilderment as Avalina spoke of the principal of Caelum.

“If you’re related, then why don’t you work with Caelum?” I queried.

“Because our place is not to interfere with the lives of the many,” Bartlett intoned, and though he came across as a pompous jerk, I knew they were words he’d had to utter often and each time had pained him.

Those shadows were back. In his eyes. In his heart. I sensed them and hurt with him at their presence.

“But Nicholas can?” Eren asked, and he was the first of my men to take a seat on the sofa once more. I wasn’t surprised. Eren was the calmest of us all, the least hotheaded. Within minutes of him taking a seat, the others joined him, sitting down for story time with the ‘Elders.’

Unlike the others, I didn’t. I remained standing. I wasn’t sure why I needed to, just knew that if I was standing, it would be easier to run…

“Nicholas shouldn’t, but there are many things we shouldn’t do and yet we do.” Avalina shrugged. “I understand his ethos. It is one I wish I could involve myself in, but we don’t. We can’t. Bartlett contacting Merinda was an issue, but I understood why. We come across Jannah once in a blue moon.”

“ Jannah ?” I repeated, frowning at the word, one that was completely new to me.

Bartlett smiled. “What you and I are.” He waved a hand that encompassed the men and murmured, “They are majnūn. They are the flowers from our seeds. Jannah are God’s children themselves—eight creatures housed in one soul.”

My mouth felt so dry that it hurt to lick my lips. “God’s children?” I squeaked.

He nodded. “When Eve was born, Adam was God’s gift to her. She had a world to settle,” he said, squeezing his wife’s arm, “a world to populate. She couldn’t do that alone, and so Adam was born.”

“Why do you speak in the third person?” Reed asked, his voice low.

“Because those people died a long time ago. The people standing here today are Avalina and Bartlett. We’ve lived nine lives, led nine different incarnations. Adam and Eve were the first, but these are our last.”

“What do you mean?” Eren questioned, sitting up and making the leather Chesterfield beneath him creak as he did so.

“This was our last chance. When we die this time, we will die for good.”

There was no sadness in Bartlett’s tone, not even resignation. If anything, I believed I heard excitement, and I supposed that made sense.

God only knew—literally—how long this man and woman had lived, and I could only imagine how tired they were.

“I think you should begin at the beginning,” Frazer suggested, his tone commanding but polite. I hadn’t heard him get up, but when I felt his hand on my elbow, I didn’t pull away.

“Will you sit, Eve?” Bartlett asked, his eyes and attention wholly on me. “We mean you no harm. If anything, we have answers for you.”

Because I sensed the truth in him, I allowed Frazer to tug me onto his lap. Unlike Stefan, he didn’t cop a feel, as Samuel called it, but he did hold me tight in his grasp. That was good, though, because I felt as though I were on the brink of shattering into a thousand pieces and only he and the rest of my mates were the glue that could keep me together.

Was I surprised when Bartlett stepped back from Avalina, grabbed her desk chair, and brought it over so it was closer to us? Not really. What did surprise me was when he hauled Avalina onto his lap as Frazer had me, and she snuggled into him, as happy as a cat in front of a fire.

Bartlett cleared his throat as he slipped his arm around his wife’s waist and said, “God gave the life giver—Eve—the Jannah —myself as a means of creating a world where we could all live. I was born with the ability to grant her the things she needed most. While she might believe she needs a pair of Louboutins now, she doesn’t, and that is why she won’t receive it. The wishes are God-granted, and He decides what is gifted and what isn’t.

“However, I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I even knew about this ability, Eve and I lived in the Garden of Eden. We were happy, content, but as is the way of humans, we grew bored and unappreciative.”

Avalina whispered, “I fell into temptation, and that was the beginning of the end.”

Bartlett rubbed his wife’s arm. “We were born to fall, Ava. You know that.” Her jaw tightened, and she turned her face away from us. Her guilt was as prevalent now as though she’d eaten the apple yesterday, and not thousands of years or more earlier. “The second Eve ate the apple, she introduced Satan into her body. We didn’t know that at the time, were just aware that life had forever changed when we were tossed out of the Garden.

“And though we were terrified,” he admitted, shuddering, his fear a real thing, “when Eve wished for the sweet nectar of juice to quench her thirst as we baked under the sun’s rays for the first time in our existence, it appeared. Right before us.”

My brow puckered. “Wait. So, God knew you were going to be tempted and made you Jannah so you’d have something to safeguard the pair of you outside of Eden?” I inquired softly, wondrous at the generosity inherent in that act. God’s knowledge that man and woman were born to fall hadn’t stopped him from gifting them a safety net of incredible proportions.

“Yes. It didn’t take us long to realize what was happening. We wished to return home, back to Eden, but that didn’t work. We wished to return to the moment before Eve ate the apple, nor did that work. But when we wished for shelter from the sun and water to quench our thirst? A river was sprung, and trees began to grow along its banks.” His tone grew hoarse with the memories. “Those days were difficult. It’s hard to believe that we survived them, even if that was what we were born to do. To become survivors, to create the world under God’s hand.” He swallowed thickly. “We created our first home. It was remarkably like Eden, but could never be as beautiful. We realized that we could live, that we had food in our bellies and water for our thirst. The wishes didn’t dry up, but they became more specific. We were never allowed to rest on our laurels with them.”

Ava pulled a face. “What he means is we couldn’t just wish for the oxen that had been born from our wish to die and be butchered for us. We had to work for it. Once we had the means of surviving, of creating life, we could no longer rely upon Adam’s abilities.”

“I guess that makes sense. You would have grown bored as you did in Eden, would have stopped appreciating the gift He’d given you, and the cycle would begin again,” I concluded.

Ava’s lips twitched. “You are wiser than I was at that time. I was very resentful and was a horrible woman to be around. Especially when I had my first child and, though I wished for relief from the pain, I was never granted it.”

“Woman’s punishment,” I whispered then quoted from Genesis, “ I will intensify yourlabor pains; you will bear children withpainfuleffort.”

“Yes,” Avalina grunted. “The punishment was very real and very horrendous. I’d never experienced the like before or since. That first dose of pain was a wake-up call, I suppose. When my first son was born, it almost marred the joy of the moment. And when I was pregnant with my second son, I was terrified. It wasn’t as bad, but only because I was prepared for it.” She sucked down a shaky breath, and I felt for her, wished I had the right to reach for her hand and hold it, squeeze it with mine to give her comfort.

She’d done wrong, and though God had protected her in many ways, he’d still punished her. Still found ways to ensure that man was tested.

“It’s important that I clarify something. We weren’t the first children on Earth, but we were the first of God’s children with his intent inside us. We didn’t create the first township on the planet, nor did we give birth to the first child to walk these lands. At the time, there was early man. Evolution played a huge part in the creation story, and that is whom our own children had congress with. With whom they bore the first of the children who would truly populate this realm with the inference of creating a society,” Bartlett explained.

“We didn’t look as we do now,” Ava joked. “Let’s just put it that way. Evolution does and always will play a huge role in all we do.”

As we nodded our understanding, Bartlett sucked in a breath and carried on, “So, while we believed that all was well, it wasn’t. We bore seven sons, no more and no less, not in this incarnation or any other. Just seven. They were well. Hale and hearty. Beautiful creatures that continue to make me proud to this day for they still live. Most of our nearest kin do.

“When Avalina and I merged together, we created the majnūn . They were the first of your kind,” Bartlett said, gesturing to the men. “Each one was the first Were, the first gouille, the first Vampire, etc. Because they were the first, we never thought anything of their abilities. There was no war in them, not like there is with creatures today. They were perfect, and now, I realize that was how each of God’s children was supposed to be. Majnūn . Before we corrupted everything, God’s plan was for us to sire only creatures.

“But our infested seed, you see, was sowed in their children. Eve, when she bit into the apple, took the devil inside her. He infected the life giver with his taint, poisoning the root of God’s children.” He swallowed again, his sorrow clear. “The war was inside our sons, and the first Ghouls were born of them.

“In the eighteen children sired by my boys, the damage to the rootstock began to show. Two of those were humans—Cain and Abel.” Pain flashed in his eyes. “They were our grandsons, not sons, and we all know how they ended up. And a further three of those eighteen babes were Ghouls. They were the very first.” His tone quieted. “All save the humans live to this day.”

“Wait, three Ghouls started the whole world’s population of them?” Frazer rasped.

Bartlett’s mouth tightened. “No, it may seem that way, but no. Every single Ghoul in creation has ties to those three because they are tied to us . We bore the fruit that will poison the Earth in its entirety. What we have spent thousands of years crafting will be decimated thanks to our mistake.” He squeezed Avalina. “The devil is inside every majnūn and it was, once upon a time, God’s will that saved them. Spared them, but then, the devil began to win. His evil began to overtake everything the humans did, damaging the majnūn with their industry and capitalistic ways.” He shuddered. “We live now as punishment. When first we died, we thought that was it for us. We saw the cycle of life, knew everything came to an end, and expected to pass over, for that to be our time on this plane…”

“But that didn’t happen?” Nestor prompted, and I heard the intensity of his curiosity in his tone—that was my man, curious about everything and nothing. In another life, he’d have been a scientist. Instead, he was fighting a war.

Life sucked like that sometimes.

“No,” Avalina said in a low tone, her eyes downcast. “Being cast from Eden, our line forever tarnished, wasn’t punishment enough. To seek atonement, we had to make good on our mistakes.” She bit her bottom lip. “That has yet to happen, and this was our final chance.”

“How long does a life last?” Reed drawled. “I mean, early man are hundreds of thousands of years old…”

Bartlett shot him a look. “Incarnations don’t work on a timeline.”

That had Reed squinting back. “Huh? You’re incarnated, but your kids aren’t. Nicholas doesn’t look like a Neanderthal?— ”

“He just acts like one when Janvier is around,” Frazer mocked, and though I didn’t understand what he meant, the others snickered.

The words brought a surprising levity to the serious mood, which had overtaken the study. I wasn’t sure if that was for good or ill. Not when the tension wending its way inside me made me feel like I was on the brink of implosion.

“We weren’t the only ones handed nine incarnations. The sins of the fathers and all that…,” Ava explained with a grimace. “We’ve all been working to resolve the Original Sin, but it’s difficult when the majnūn are unstable.”

So, wait. Each incarnation had the potential to last tens of thousands of years?

My mind felt like a car wreck at the thought. How much had they seen? They’d been a part of evolution itself, so what hadn’t they come to know?

“Why are you telling us this? I mean… I know we came here for answers, but this is information you can’t share with anyone you just meet. Why us? What makes us worthy?” I whispered, my voice low and husky as the ramifications of what they were telling me hit home.

They’d probably never shared this story, yet here they were, opening up to me like I was a chat show host or something. And this was no lie.

I felt their truth.

In my bones.

My eighth soul throbbed dully in recognition, and that more than anything terrified the life out of me.

Then, when Avalina looked me square in the eye and told me, “Because you are Jannah , and you are our means of salvation,” I wished I’d never asked.