Spirits of the Earth: The Complete Series: (A Post-Apocalyptic Series Box Set: Books 1-3) by Milo Fowler (paper ebook reader .TXT) 📕

the vehicle. She looks out of place there, having appeared without warning like a ghost, glowing red in the taillights. My heart skips a beat at the sight of her.

She always has this effect on me.

“Julia.” I want to run to her and gather her into my arms, but it’s like I’m in a dream, and my legs turned to stone when I wasn’t looking.

She smiles at me but waits until the vehicle has taken off before she approaches. I know I should follow the Hummer, soaring above, keeping an eye out for any unforeseen dangers. But as Julia melts into my embrace, there’s nowhere else I’d ever want to be.

“It’s been so long,” I whisper. Weeks since our last meeting—maybe longer. I can’t be sure. She nuzzles my chest, squeezing me tight without a word. “Where have you been?” I always ask her this.

She comes and goes with no understanding of the time that elapses in between. If it’s true that she somehow represents the spirits of all the animals who once lived without fear of humankind, then it’s also true that she’s not a tame spirit.

No one could hope to contain her.

“I’ve been watching you,” she says.

“Where?” I glance about, but there’s no higher ground.

“You’ve missed me.” She gazes upward with emerald eyes that seem to glow in the dark. Wisps of her golden hair undulate in the frigid breeze.

“You know I have.” I kiss her forehead, her skin warm and soft against my chapped lips. “Where do you go, when you disappear for so long?”

She shrugs as if it makes no difference. “Here and there. This is a large continent, you know. It takes a while to get from one end to the other.”

“Not for you.” I squeeze her against me. “What do you do out there all by yourself?”

A mischievous gleam shines in her eyes. “I’m never alone, Milton. There are many of my kind here. Not all of them are as social as I am. Most of them are shy around humans.”

“Other spirits.” The Hummer’s engine is almost out of earshot now. “Like Jackson?”

“Yes.” Her smile dims. “But he no longer spends much time in that guise.”

Glad to hear it. Almost a year ago, the evil spirits of the earth tried to convince me to blow Eden’s nuclear reactor. At the time, I was almost swayed by Jackson’s persuasive arguments; but, thankfully, Julia’s love intervened. Maybe it was only an ethereal remnant of the loyalty and devotion pets showed their trusted owners back in the day, but I prefer to believe it’s love.

Because I love her, now more than ever before—even when she was alive.

“Is he still up to no good?”

“He hasn’t changed in that regard,” she says quietly, her gaze pensive.

I watch her for a moment. “What is it, Julia? He hasn’t gone back on his word, has he?”

She shakes her head. “He is not a man, that his promise would be mutable. He will never attack you or your people again.” She pauses. “Not directly.”

I don’t like the sound of that. “So he’s bending the rules now, in other words.”

She bites her lip, looking as human as Julia ever did. “He has influenced the survivors who live on the coast. Cain and his people—they worship him without knowing who or what he truly is. He has deceived them all, and his deception could lead to the ruin of all that you’ve fought for these past months.”

I glance eastward, but the Hummer is nowhere in sight. “I have to stop them. If they’re headed into a trap—”

“No. Luther and Bishop must meet. So much depends on it.”

“I don’t understand.” I feel lost all of a sudden, and I never feel that way around her. “I’ve got to do something. I just don’t have a clue what it is.”

Her grip tightens on my arm. “Come with me, then.”

“Where?”

“To the coast. You can stem the tide, before it’s too late.” She must be speaking in metaphor, because I seldom understand her when she does.

“I can’t leave them.”

“They will be fine. For now, the greatest danger lies on your western shore. Cain has committed a violent act against a member of the UW team. He has taken a life, and for this atrocity the UW will unleash its full vengeance upon the people of Cain’s Shipyard.”

I frown. “But…Cain is headed out here, to the Homeplace. Won’t he take his people with him?”

“Not all of them. He will take the strongest and leave the rest—the old, the weak, as well as his pregnant wives. They will be at the mercy of the UW when they land on shore.”

I back away from her. None of this sounds right. “He’s as protective of his people as Luther is—maybe even more so. There’s no way he would abandon—”

“Jackson has clouded his mind, Milton. Cain has become overwhelmed by evil.” She shakes her head at the limitations of human speech. “There is no other word for it that you would understand. His heart is consumed by darkness. Jackson will use him to destroy all of you!”

I back away another step. “I can’t go and help his people when I should be protecting my own—from him.”

Tears glisten in Julia’s eyes. “All of them are your people, Milton. Can’t you see that? You must protect them from themselves.”

“Why me?” I’m being pulled in three directions at once. I’m only one man—gifted with superhuman abilities, sure, but I’m limited to being in one place at a time. I can’t possibly protect Luther and his people, Margo and the UW team, as well as Cain’s abandoned followers. “Can’t you help those people? Why does it have to be me?”

“You have faced him before,” she says. “He cannot touch you. He has sworn it, and so it must be.”

“Jackson?”

“He manifests himself to Cain as Gaia, mother of the earth. But to you, he would appear as you remember him.”

Not a pleasant thought.

“Gaia, huh?” I frown at that. “Some kind of goddess?”

Jackson never was a drag queen, as