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

her. "Do they really seem that bright to you?" They had a walking lump of barbecue leading them until very recently. I raise my voice for Samson's benefit, "I'll get them inside. Don't you worry. Cain's going to help us."

More grunts from the badly roasted neanderthal.

No sight of any UW raiders so far. Maybe they got scared off by Cain's missile strikes and decided to lay low for a day or two. Let things calm down a bit before they go back to their larcenous ways.

Hard to believe Stack is demolished. If we head back that way after dropping the Wasterlanders off in Eden, we could see about helping Tullson and his people rebuild. Assuming anyone survived.

"Well, aren't you the do-gooder," Willard sneers, somehow managing to sit next to me with one leg hanging over the side of the jeep. Easy enough to manage when you're noncorporeal. I really need to refill my flask. "Since when do you give a crap about helping anybody out?"

"I seem to remember a certain Edenite you could have helped but chose not to," Mother Lairen adds, sitting on the other side of Shechara in an equally impossible position. Her flaming red hair flaps in the breeze. "Perhaps you no longer have a stomach for killing, but deciding who lives or dies—whom you help and whom you ignore? It's the same thing, Daiyna."

Shechara hears me grumble aloud as I squeeze my head with both hands. "What is it? Do you need us to stop?"

"I need something to drink," I groan.

Rehana stands on the running board on my side of the jeep and holds onto the roll bar. That's how it looks, anyway. It's all a matter of perception and supernaturally manifested memories. The good news: Willard has disappeared for the moment.

"You're putting them in danger, going back there," she says.

"I'm keeping them from danger." I shake my head and close my eyes.

"Who, Daiyna?" Shechara says, holding me close. She sounds worried.

Probably because I'm talking to myself like a crazy person.

"You're running away," Mother Lairen says. "As soon as it looked like Samson would take you back to Luther, you immediately offered to fight Cain. And if that wasn't enough of a death wish, now you're escorting these cannibals to Eden. To die."

"They deserve it," I mutter.

"She's not well," Shechara tells Samson. "We should stop."

"No, I'm fine." I give her a nod and try to ignore my spirit-friends for the moment. "We need to keep going." Make up as much ground as we can in daylight, then squeeze the batteries' juice dry after dark.

We should be passing my derelict jeep soon. After that, it'll be another fifty kilometers to Eden. Doubtful we'll run into any bounty hunters along the way. The Wastelanders on their grinding bikes are a force to be reckoned with, enough to scare away any Edenites with delusions of grit.

"This is about revenge." The Rehana-spirit faces me. "Whether you admit it or not. You've found a dozen unpredictable marauders, and you want to sic them on Perch and his men. Because payback is a real bitch."

"You can keep your hands clean," Mother Lairen echoes. Always a joy when the spirits tag-team up against me. "You won't be doing the actual killing yourself."

I smile beneath my head covering and keep my mouth shut. This isn't about revenge. I'm leading the Wastelanders to a better life, one they've never experienced. Once they take residence in Eden, enjoying all of its modern conveniences, they'll give up their marauding ways. If they don't get along with the Edenites, and if there happens to be some bloodshed, well, that's really none of my concern.

I'm not running away. I plan to join Shechara and Samson wherever they go after this. If it's back to Luther and the others, then so be it. I'm not afraid of him.

"You're afraid of who you are with him," Rehana suggests, and I don't like the sound of that at all. "You love him, but you can't bear to be around him. You're afraid you won't have anything left to offer. And you don't know how to talk to him about your children—"

"That's enough!" My voice is sharp. Both Shechara and Samson look at me. Cain stops grunting.

Just because they share my DNA—and Luther's—doesn't make them my children. Margo assembled them in a laboratory. They grew and developed inside man-made incubation chambers, surrounded by artificial amniotic fluid. Nothing about them is natural.

I'm fine never seeing them again. They gave me the creeps.

"You may be able to lie to yourself, but you can't lie to us," Rehana says. "You may never be able to have children naturally, after what happened to you in Eden. But you have ten children living across the sea. And if Luther is successful in finding a way into Eurasia to locate them, he will need you by his side."

I'm sure Luther is doing just fine without me. I don't know who he's surrounding himself with these days—obviously not Shechara and Samson. I have no idea who survived Cain's missile attack on the Homeplace. But without me around, at least he doesn't have to be constantly reminded of the deaths I caused during my Eden rampage. And I don't have to see the disappointment in his eyes when he looks at me.

When he sees what I've become.

"You can find yourself again, Daiyna." Rehana leans toward me. "Isolation has not been good for you."

As much as I've longed for solitude, I haven't been alone. These spirits haven't given me a moment's peace lately. They've driven me nuts.

For a long while, they didn't appear to me at all. Back when I burned with a thirst for vengeance, when my only waking—and sometimes dreaming—thoughts were of killing Willard and Perch and obliterating Eden. Darkness festered inside me then, driving a wedge between me and others in the Homeplace who didn't share my hatred.

Luther was one of them. Things between us weren't good for a while before I left the group. Finding out we had