Authors: C.L. Parker
Cataclysm (49 page)
He did feel it. This place held all the answers to life. They were hidden somewhere in the mystic white fog, and all one had to do was simply ask to have them revealed. But there was a warning that pulled at the corner of his mind. It was too much knowledge for one person to have, dangerous and precarious.
Just then, two figures walked by. Kerrigan stepped into his side, and he wrapped his arm around her. The man looked remarkably similar to Dominic, only from a different time. The hair on his face was longer, and he wore a duster that fell to his dusty cowboy boots. A black Stetson was perched on his head, but his green eyes could not be hidden. Smile lines crinkled the corner of his eyes as he looked adoringly into the face of the woman in his company.
Kerrigan. Her hair was pulled up into a tight bun with loose tendrils hanging in ringlets around her face and down her delicate neck. She walked with a graceful stride, her long, full skirt brushing the ground. Her lips were just as full and her eyes were just as blue and soft.
“It’s us,” Kerrigan said. “I remember that day.” It shouldn’t have been possible, but Dominic knew it to be true because he remembered it, too.
“That was the day I asked your father for permission to court you, officially,” Dominic said. “Your name was Kate then, am I right?”
She nodded. “And you were Dusty.”
She was right. “Your father swore no man was good enough for you, but he changed his tune when—”
“I threatened to run away from home and marry you by night’s end,” she said, finishing his sentence, and laughing at the memory. “Sure taught him a lesson. He never could deny me what I wanted.”
The couple faded, only to be replaced by another. Still Kerrigan and Dominic, but in another lifetime. When they were gone, there was only Kerrigan. She was a child, sitting alone as her life whirled around her. Children who picked on her in class because she was weird, parents who didn’t pay her any attention, boys who pretended to like her as a cruel joke, an adult life filled with nothing but more loneliness until she died alone. Through it all, there was the overwhelming sense that she was searching for someone who never came. Kerrigan closed her eyes and turned away from the scene.
“Where were you?” she asked as she opened her eyes to gaze at him. One lonely tear cascaded down her cheek.
“Here,” he said, gently stoking her temple. “Always just on the edge of your memories. And hopefully, here,” he placed his hand on her chest, just over her heart. “Forever deep... in the center of your heart.”
The heat of his skin penetrated hers, sending waves of truth burning through the center of her chest to where she had always kept him. Her heart thumped loudly, something wild and untamed threatening to break free.
She looked from his hand, back to his beautiful face. The desire and love she saw nearly stole her breath away as she remembered every lifetime of searching for him.
“I’ve never stopped loving you. I looked everywhere for you... always. But... there were times when I couldn’t see you anywhere, and others where I felt you... but you were just out of reach.”
She recalled lives when she had felt empty and alone, even though she knew deep in her heart he was out there somewhere, gazing at the same moon, maybe even feeling the same breeze. Those were the times that she felt him the most, when she was standing still and throwing her thoughts out into the world, feeling the answer she was seeking in the form of a breeze that would suddenly assault her as if it was moving straight through her.
“Shh, Querida.” His lips moved over hers. “I was looking for you, too.” He nodded in the other direction. His solo life played opposite hers. It was the same story of loneliness leading to destructive behavior that landed him in a jail cell for most of his life. He, too, was searching, never finding.
“But, we’re here now... together. Just you and me, as it should be.” He hugged her close.
And then another scene came of them together, happy and in love. They were at a beach party, and they were the envy of every man and woman. Dominic’s hair was cut neat, and he sat on a rock beside a bonfire, strumming his guitar while Kerrigan leaned into him with stars in her eyes. The pink headband that was nestled in her thick, shoulder-length hair was a perfect complement to the modest bathing suit she wore. Their love was palpable and destined for forever, until that, too, morphed into another space and time.
The scenes of their past lives played before them like ghosts upon a breeze, weaving in and out, fading likewatching anold film that had been poorly reserved. Their combined memories converged and then retreated as each new lifetime sought to remind them of who they were. Shadows that were mere whispers of the times they had known and loved one another, evidence of their connection, proof of their purpose. And as each life ended, a new one began. As did their search.
All of it reminded them of one truth: Theywere two halves of one whole, destined to walk the earth in search of the other. In search of something... more. Always seeking, sometimes finding. Yet there were other times whentheir paths just didn’t cross and they were incomplete. But they always felt the other, that tug toward something they couldn’t quite touch.
“So many lifetimes that I have loved you,” she whispered as the last of the images faded from view.
A million voices in the back of his mind, each of them having once belonged to her, told him it was true. As impossible as it seemed, he couldn’t question it because he felt it, too—lifetimes of loving the woman he now knew as Kerrigan Cruz.
He took a step back so that he could see her face. Cupping her cheek, he wiped her tears away, his fingertips falling to caress the curve of her neck and floating over the top of her shoulder and down her arm to take her hands in his.
“Te amaré para siempre. I will love you... forever.”
Kerrigan closed her eyes. “Siempre,” she whispered. A surge of Light flared through her body. Murmured voices told her the secret to cure his curse, although her heart already knew the answer. She was very much aware of the risks involved, but she was willing to do whatever it took to ensure they would never be separated again. She didn’t care that she might lose her gift if she saved him. She didn’t even care if she lost her life. Living without him wasn’t much of a life anyway. Live or die, at least they would always be together.
Siempre.
“I release half of your soul back to you, Dominic Grayson, and I give you half of mine as well.” Before he could refuse her gift, she kissed him. A bright spark of light ignited when their lips met, sealing the endowment. She could feel the reluctance in his kiss. He knew what she was risking, but judging by his gradual relaxation, he understood her reason for doing it. He, too, had known life without her.
He trembled under her touch and held on to her just as tightly as she held on to him. If they lived, a part of each of them would also live on in the other. If they died, their souls would still be united, and they would never lose each other again.
The Light surrounded them, so blindingly bright they melted into their surroundings. It consumed them, filling each of their bodies until it was greater than either of them. Their physical forms began to flake and separate like dust in the wind. Minuscule particles mixed and swirled in the air around them until there was no way to tell where Dominic began and Kerrigan ended. They opened their eyes and gazed at one another—a promise of tomorrow on their lips, a pledge of forever in their eyes, until those, too, were lost to the brilliance of the Light, and they simply faded away.
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