Kismet Read online

  Kismet

  Beth D. Carter

  www.loose-id.com

  Kismet

  Copyright © July 2011 by Beth D. Carter

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  eISBN 978-1-61118-453-2

  Editor: Rory Olsen

  Cover Artist: April Martinez

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published by

  Loose Id LLC

  PO Box 425960

  San Francisco CA 94142-5960

  www.loose-id.com

  This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning

  This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id LLC’s e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.

  * * *

  DISCLAIMER: Please do not try any new sexual practice, especially those that might be found in our BDSM/fetish titles without the guidance of an experienced practitioner. Neither Loose Id LLC nor its authors will be responsible for any loss, harm, injury or death resulting from use of the information contained in any of its titles.

  Dedication

  Every night when I sit down at my computer to write, my son comes up every few minutes asking if I’m done writing my book. He says he loves me and wants to play swords with me, to fight the bad guys and win. I don’t know what we’re winning, but how can I say no? We swashbuckle around the living room, he with his plastic sword and I with my wooden kitchen spoon. In my son’s eyes, it’s perfectly normal for Mommy to be writing a book, and that makes me very happy…because I’ve shown him that any dream can come true.

  Acknowledgement

  My deepest thanks to Rory Olsen, Jennifer B, April Martinez, and the whole Loose Id team for liking Evie enough to bring her to life. And thanks to my friends Perla, Andy, and Shalana. You guys rock.

  Prologue

  The dream must have started right after I fell asleep, because one minute I’m listening to crickets singing, and the next I materialize in front of two men. But it’s all right because I know these men. I have dreamed of them my whole life.

  I see their names on the crisp military uniforms they wear. There is Galloway, the one with reddish gold hair, eyes a deep forest green, and dimples every time he smiles. The other, who’s just a fraction taller and a tad broader through the shoulders, has the name Seek sewn above his heart. He has dark hair and equally dark eyes, and through my dreams I’ve come to know that his personality is the complete opposite of his partner’s. One man is outgoing, flirtatious, with a devil-may-care grin he uses to great advantage. The other is quiet, controlled, almost subdued.

  As I walk toward them, Seek turns his face from me and vanishes. At first I’m startled, unsure, but Galloway holds out his hand, and without thought I take it, feeling confused and disoriented because I am not used to dreams where I am the one being manipulated. He brings me in close, enfolding me. He’s so big and tall that he practically wraps around me.

  “Save him,” he whispers in my ear.

  It takes me a few minutes to realize what he said, because I’m still trying to get my bearings in this unusual dream. Usually the men never talk to me.

  “Save who?” I pull away, and I feel his arms drop from my body. The heat he generated dissipates, and I shiver at the loss. His green eyes are staring at me with such sadness my heart almost stops.

  “He will die unless you reach him in time.”

  Those words are ice in my veins. I reach out again, intent on keeping him with me and finding out more, but he’s fading. Actually, he’s melting before my eyes. Literally. His skin starts to bubble and boil, peeling away layer by layer, until he’s nothing but a skeleton turning to ash. I scream so long and so loud that my throat turns raw. I don’t know what to do. I am helpless as I watch him disintegrate.

  And then he’s gone, and I realize that I am standing in the center of some city. It’s night, and I’m all alone on the deserted streets. My screams die off as I turn in a circle, trying to find something that will give me a clue as to where I am. Street signs tell me I’m standing on the corner of North Main and West First, not exactly pinpoint locations since every fucking city in the United States has—had—them both.

  I take a chance and start running, suddenly realizing that my clothes have changed. Instead of my standard black pants and shirt ensemble, I am dressed in a flowing white gown. I frown, wondering what part of my psyche is so damaged that it puts me in a damsel-in-distress dress.

  But no sooner had that little thought zoomed into my brain when my eyes catch another street sign. I bring my dash to a halt, panting slightly, frowning when I read the words NORTH LOS ANGELES STREET.

  Fuck. This is not a city I want to be in. A once great and powerful metropolis, now it’s nothing more than a lost civilization of anarchy and turmoil. A person would have to be certifiable to even consider going into LA.

  I spot a lone figure standing on the sidewalk staring at me. I flinch and reach for my gun, which isn’t there thanks to my dress. As I ponder how I’m going to handle the man, he turns slightly, and I recognize the military uniform.

  Breathing a little easier, I walk toward him, and in the twilight, I see it’s not Galloway. Seek’s tanned face is contorted with anguish.

  “Seek?” I ask, trying to grab his hand, which dangles at his side. But he has become nothing more than mist. “What’s happening? Where’s Galloway?”

  “Save him,” he says, eerily repeating the exact words that Galloway had spoken to me earlier. The solitary tear running down his cheek crystallizes on the frozen vapor that is Seek’s skin.

  And then the eruption of gunfire surrounds us. I duck and reach for Seek, but he falls back, eyes open wide and unseeing. Smoke wafts from the bullet hole in his forehead.

  Before my brain can process what has happened, the ground beneath my feet starts shaking. I am violently flung down, and it is impossible to stand. Buildings shake apart; trees topple over. The earth cracks, and I feel the heat of hell rise up, burning me alive. I can feel my skin blister as my body catches fire.

  Again, the screams pour out of me, jarring me awake, and the lingering taste of inhaled smoke is sharp upon my tongue. The terror I’ve just lived through forces me to crawl out of my little tent and run to a nearby tree where I vomit bile.

  After I’ve managed to steady my heaving stomach, I scuttle backward until my backside hits the tree base. It is still night, but I know I won’t be able to sleep anymore. Born with the nightmare is an urgency I’ve never felt before. Fear grips me deep down as ice freezes my soul.

  I need to get to LA.

  Chapter One

  My Ice Cat four-wheeler crosses the invisible line separating Arizona and California, and no sooner have my tires spun upon the sand-coated freeway than a vision dances through my mind.

  It’s of a woman, short and tired looking, with a really bad dye job in her straw-dry hair. She stands in front of a restaurant, waiting for her ride, when a truck pulls up next to her with two men inside the cab. Th
ey talk, though I can’t hear what they say, and then the passenger opens his door and grabs her. She gives a silent scream, and the vision dies away. The scene is replaced with her face as a death mask over my mind.

  I sigh as the vision starts over, repeating frame by frame, only softer now like a memory. Not quite as sharp or as pungent as the original, but there nonetheless.

  My visions are, unfortunately, selective. I am not able to pick or choose who or what I see. I wish I could, because life would be so much easier if I were able to direct my premonitions. Instead, I get maybe a half hour’s warning of what is to be. They come in a flash, can be heightened by touch, and most of the time leave me frustrated.

  The vision starts to repeat faster as I near a hole-in-the-wall town called Badlupa. My instinct warns me this place is aptly named, but I have to ignore my unflinching intuition, even though I would love nothing more than to hightail it down the interstate. The wind blows hot, and the sun is bright, even through my sunglasses. I exit at the ramp and take note of the chain-link fence running alongside, making the impression of a prison that much stronger.

  Badlupa is a pissant little place, a blip on a map, built around travelers crisscrossing Interstate 40. But since the virus ravaged through the human population, no one really goes anywhere anymore, thus forcing small communities like Badlupa to become almost lawless. God, it’s like going back to the Wild West, except the only horses around are those under the hoods of cars.

  The world hadn’t been ready for the biological weapon that North Korea had launched into the atmosphere. The poison gas spread like wildfire, and when the virus had run its course, what remained was a world trying to pick up the pieces. What I realized in my traveling was that most people decided to isolate themselves in fear of either contracting the disease or becoming prey to those who didn’t. The United States still has a president though he ran it with a militaristic system of government, but most left behind migrated into cities where food was more prevalent and protection readily available. Places like Badlupa still exist because some people can never leave their comfort zones and head into the unknown.

  The unknown can get you killed.

  I drive my four-wheeler down the one street that makes up all of Badlupa. I see trailers and several run-down houses, a dried-up gas station, a forgotten hotel whose windows are busted, and the restaurant from my vision. Of course, all the broken dwellings remind me of my own little troublesome hometown. For a moment, I can almost hear the echo of my stepdad calling me.

  “Eva-Ann Florence Rhoton! Get your ass inside, girl, before I bust it!”

  I hated that man even more than I hate my full name. But my past is about a million miles away from me, both in distance and in my heart, and just as I couldn’t wait to shake off that South Louisiana stymie, now I can’t wait for Badlupa to be in my rearview mirror.

  But before I can do that, I must satisfy the vision playing through my mind like a grocery list from hell.

  Unlike the unknown woman, I know one of her possible futures. But I can change that, and I’m guessing that I was sent to help her, to make sure the men who take her fail. She must have something great waiting for her to accomplish, so the bad men I see have to be stopped. I am a firm believer in divine intervention, so I never question why I have this gift. I’ve seen too much in my twenty-five years on this earth not to believe that there’s got to be something better than this. Yet still, though I know what my mission is about, taking care of the local yokels is going to be a pain in my ass because I hate any delay that sidetracks me from reaching Los Angeles, from reaching the two men I’ve dreamed about.

  For my entire life, the visions that have come to me have been about immediate problems. Fixing or helping people in the now. I need to be in close proximity, and I get very little warning to actually accomplish the task. But my dreams have always been different from the visions that come to me when I’m awake. They have centered on two men who have grown up with me through the years, starting as young children, turning into teenagers, and finally handsome men. Seek and Galloway. I know one of these men is destined for me, my soul mate. I just don’t know which one.

  My mother called them my imaginary playmates when I happened to mention them once. After she married my stepdad, I stopped telling her anything, because more often than not, she was either stoned or drunk.

  When I turned eighteen, and just before the virus struck, I had had enough of my stepdad’s abuse and left. I tried one time to talk to my mother, begging her to leave him and come with me, anywhere, and end the cycle of abuse. But she slapped me, told me to stop acting like a slut trying to steal her husband away. So I left my mama in her hovel of a trailer and went to Georgia. I got a job as a waitress and never looked back.

  The virus had been the one thing I never saw coming.

  It has been the singularly most overwhelming guilt I’ve ever felt. One of my coworkers had a daughter, and it almost killed me to watch her die in her mother’s arms, because I never had a chance to warn my friend. I don’t know the reason why I never had a premonition about the virus, but I hope I never have to experience that helplessness again.

  Early on, no one knew why some contracted the virus and others didn’t, and so like the Black Death from the Middle Ages, people feared what they didn’t know. But who could blame them? The symptoms were horrible. High fever, vomiting blood, swelling lymph nodes. It was almost exactly like the bubonic plague, except the bacteria wouldn’t respond to any known antibiotic, and the only cure was death.

  Obviously I was one of the lucky who seemed to be immune. And I did my best to help others, but then came a dream that changed everything. In it, I saw Seek and Galloway in military uniform crossing into Missouri, the Arch very visible as they traveled over the Mississippi River. I had never before dreamed of them in a place I could identify, and I took this as a sign. I knew, somehow, that I had been given their location for a reason. So I packed up my car, said good-bye to my small community of coworkers and friends, and left.

  At the time, I thought I had it all figured out. I would go to Missouri, meet them, find out which man was supposed to be my destined love, and that would be that. Finally, after years of being alone, I would have a partner with whom to travel through life. However, by the time I got to Missouri, I discovered their company had rolled out. I was left feeling frustrated and confused, so without another dream to guide my destination, I settled for a time in the soon-to-be new capital of the barely-holding-on United States.

  It was there that I saved a man from a runaway SUV, using my little car to block its path. And being ever so grateful to still be alive, the man gave me a durable off-road ATV, the Ice Cat. The idea of trading my special gift for favors was born, and since then, I’ve collected many skills.

  I sit in my ATV and wait, mindful of the few souls who eye me. I guess it’s not often they see a long-legged blonde dressed all in black, ridding into town like a badass bitch. It’s not all show, though. I’m pretty confident I can kick these spectators’ asses. One thing I’ve learned is never be a liability to myself.

  I keep my gaze focused primarily on the restaurant, and before too long my target emerges. It’s no surprise to me that she is exactly as I saw her in my mind, down to the double-knotted shoelaces on her dirty sneakers. Her hair is multicolored reds, not quite matching the faded pink waitress uniform that looks to be a tad too tight for her. She stands next to the broken curb, looking for someone, and our gazes briefly lock. I wear mirrored sunglasses, and I can tell this disconcerts her, because she glances at me a few more times.

  Most people don’t know what to make of me, and that’s all right. I have this silly Southern accent I can’t seem to shake, I stand about five feet ten inches without shoes, my long legs are encased in black, and I have pale blond hair that hangs almost to my ass. I guess one day I should cut it, but it’s the one vanity I have kept. Right now it’s braided back because the wind plays hell with it as I drive and causes all kinds of kno
ts that take me hours to brush out.

  A tingle starts to churn in my gut, and I know whatever is about to go down will be happening soon. So I exit the Cat and walk over to the girl. All her pretense at not staring drops, and I see her eyes widen with each step I take toward her.

  “Hey,” I say in greeting, smiling to put her at ease. “My name is Evie Rhoton.”

  “Hey,” she answers back in a shy, hesitant way. “I’m Nessa.”

  “That’s a pretty name,” I say. “Nessa, do you happen to know two men in a faded green pickup truck?”

  “The Donnelly brothers?” I see a spark of anger in her brown eyes. “Why would you be wanting those assholes?”

  I have to smile at this. “Oh, I don’t really want them, but they might be up to no good, causing you some trouble. Why don’t you go back into the restaurant and wait for a moment?”

  “Oh my Lord!” Nessa gasped. “Bobby did something to them, didn’t he? He went and called them out or attacked them, didn’t he?”

  “Maybe,” I reply with raised eyebrows. “What did the Donnelly brothers do?”

  She sighs. “I was workin’ late last night.” She nods over her shoulder to the restaurant. “The brothers got rowdy, and Bobby, my fiancé, threw them out.” And then she places a hand on her stomach in an unconscious gesture.

  So now I know the reason behind this vision.

  Movement catches my eye, and I look up to see the green truck turn onto the main street.

  “All right,” I say to Nessa, placing my hand on her elbow and guiding her toward the restaurant’s door. “You go on in, and I’ll take care of the Donnelly brothers.”

  She follows my gaze, and her body starts to shake. Luckily, I don’t need to prompt her again. With a squeak, she rushes back into the safety of the building.