Eden's Garden: A Nia Rivers Adventure (Nia Rivers Adventures Book 5) Read online

  “Shall we begin?” asked Michael. His attention never wavered from Eden. He continued to ignore me.

  “I suppose it is time.” Eden nodded and stepped toward him.

  “Wait.” I reached out but withdrew my hand before I actually yanked on God’s arm.

  “I have to get back to work now,” she said.

  Eden didn’t turn back to me as she spoke. I’d been dismissed. It felt like a pat on the head by a father home late from work who was preparing to go into his home office and get back online.

  “You’ll find what you seek over there. We will talk again later, Nia.”

  And then she rose into the air along with Michael. Neither of them used wings. Eden let her skin fall away and dissipate into the atmosphere. She was nothing but light as she rose into the air.

  I stared after them long after they were gone. What records? What had Eden taken from me while I was dead?

  Then I heard a familiar laugh, deep and filled with amusement and the love of life.

  Zane faced me, but his attention wasn’t on me. It was on a woman. He looked down at her with what I knew to be adoration. Jealousy stabbed my heart, so strong and so pure that I was certain I’d burst out of my skin.

  4

  I didn’t spontaneously combust. I stayed in my newly minted skin. A flood of memories pushed at the front of my brain with a force that nearly brought me to my knees. Each recollection burned clear and bright in my cramped mind, pushing aside what didn’t matter, which was nearly every other thought, remembrance, and event in my life.

  Zane.

  He’d once told me we’d met eight times. Eight times since the beginning. I’d forgotten them during my long lifetime. With all my memories now stuffed inside my small brain, I feared I’d forget again. But that wasn’t the case.

  I remembered them. I remembered every single one of them. Inside my mind’s eye, eight stars burned brightly.

  The first time we’d met had been here. He’d sat in the fields. With a stele in his hand, he drew one of the flowers. The large, purple bloom had tilted its bulbous head over. Its velvety petals were as large as lily pads. Slowly the petals unfurled, each layer of purple getting lighter and lighter until its periwinkle interior showed. Inside that interior was a yellow stamen that blinked.

  Four stamen-eyes blinked as the flowering plant regarded Zane’s work. Zane allowed the bloom to study his work, watching its reaction with amusement. There was no mouth on the bloom to indicate approval or displeasure. There was no brow over the stamen to indicate surprise or boredom. After it looked its fill, it folded up the layers of petals and resumed its initial pose.

  Zane smiled and repositioned his stele. Then, as though he felt the heat of my gaze on him, he turned his head and looked at me. The moment his eyes connected with mine I was pulled into another memory.

  I walked out of the darkness this time. Wherever I was, I came upon Zane’s back again. This time he was standing over a fire with iron tools. There were scraps of animal hides covering his torso, but just barely. Zane had always been perfectly fine with nudity.

  He hunched bare-chested over a beaded necklace. He worked the metal into a shape—the shape of my name. A U-shape with one of the tips slanted inward. He paused in his shaping, his ears twitching as though he sensed something. As he turned toward me, I was pulled away again.

  This time, when I fell into the memory, I landed in his arms. My head nuzzled into that space below his chin and just above his heart, that space where I’d always fit perfectly. Neither of us were clothed this time. The weariness and silky satisfaction of an energetic bout of lovemaking had settled into my bones.

  The moonlight shone through the structure and illuminated the pyramids outside. We could’ve been in Mesopotamia or Egypt. I wasn’t entirely sure which memory this was. I remembered that we had been reunited in both.

  We had a habit of breaking up. Not we. Me. I had a habit of leaving him. But never for long.

  The last five hundred years we’d been together were all clear in my mind. My gaze fell upon the rising columns of ancient Greece while he worked on the original Parthenon and the statue of Athena. He painted bright colors, defying the Gothic style of the Dark Ages. He looked down at me with a twinkle in his eyes as he painted the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel.

  Even though there were eight bright spots in the galaxy of my memories, that same twinkle in his eyes always glimmered in every direction in the darkness of my mind. In my star chart of memories, he was always there.

  He was always there. Even when we weren’t together, he was always near. I knew that, had always known that.

  Zane was the one constant in my life. He called me his True North, but he’d always been my anchor. The one thing I could hold on to.

  And, time and time again, I’d let him go.

  When I did, whenever I did, I floundered. Like falling through the darkness of space until we came back together again. But now, as he smiled brightly down at this female standing before him in the Garden of Eden, I wondered if perhaps I’d been too late this time.

  It had always been me who’d let go. Zane hadn’t reached out this last time I’d left. Except when I fell to my death. Now that our lives were put back together in new bodies, maybe things had changed for him.

  Zane had told me there had only ever been me in his heart while we were on Earth. But what about before we’d come up to the surface? Had he left someone behind down here?

  Even if this woman wasn’t new, maybe he was tired of me constantly leaving him. I’d made him chase me for so long, longer than any man in history likely. I’d been with his best friend, for god’s sake.

  Zane and I weren’t back together right now. We’d only just become friends again in the last few moments of our lives. I knew he loved me. I didn’t doubt that, never had. He had to know that I loved him. That had never been in question. Maybe that wasn’t enough anymore.

  Lightheaded, I blinked the stars of my mind away and focused on the bright smile of the man before me. My belly tightened with nausea, though empty of any food or water. But then, like the magnets that we were, his gaze lifted, and he found me.

  His eyes widened. His nostrils flared. The edges of his lips, which had broadened in a smile for the other woman, stretched even wider as he audibly exhaled. His gaze roamed over my form from my head to my toes. Like always, I held still for him as he took me in, but only for a few seconds.

  Zane stepped around the woman and headed toward me. I realized belatedly that I was already in motion toward him. This time when we came together, I met him more than halfway.

  He came to me, naked as the day he was born. Or rather, reborn. Nudity was a constant companion to this man. And why wouldn’t it be? Zane was magnificent.

  From his long feet that anchored his powerful thighs to his impressive manhood that, even while flaccid, still caused women to gasp. The happy trail below his belly button urged my eyes south, but I forced them up his defined chest to his face.

  He stopped abruptly as we came toe to toe. We were a hair’s breadth apart, but he didn’t take me into his arms. His eyes scanned me, every inch, like he was making a memory or looking for an imperfection. Most likely the latter.

  Zane was an artist. I was his favorite subject. He knew my features better than most.

  “How did she do?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Eden?”

  His smile widened even more, his head tilted as though to regard me from a different angle. “I didn’t think the original could be improved upon. I stand corrected. She changed the slope of your cheek…”

  He reached out his hand. My breath caught as the tips of his fingers came closer and closer, their heat preceding the impact. But his fingers halted just before they got to my skin.

  We were standing barely an inch apart from each other, but still not touching. I ached to be in his arms. I knew the moment I got there, there would be a ninth spark, a new star to join the other eight. That l
ast spark would ignite into the biggest and brightest star in my memory, and it would be the last. The last time we’d meet, because after all that we’d been through, I was never letting this man go again.

  My gaze tracked to that space just below his chin and above his heart, that space that fit me so well. Something told me not to make a dive for that spot, even though it was mine. But damn if it wasn’t hard holding still during the wait.

  In the end, Zane lowered his hand. His fingers fell to his sides. Inside my soul, the spark fizzled to an ember. A huge wave of disappointment washed over me.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I lied. “You?”

  “I feel whole now that I’ve seen you.”

  And just like that, a glow emitted from the dim light of ashes inside the pit of my stomach. I reached out to him, preparing to temper the fever between us. Before my fingertips made it across the inch-wide gulf between us, Zane leaned back just out of my reach. I yanked my hand back from the burn.

  Zane winced when he saw the hurt and rejection in my eyes. But he didn’t reach for me. He kept his distance.

  So, we weren’t all right. Even though our bodies were put back together, even though our spirits were renewed, the two of us were still broken.

  Zane sighed as he met my gaze. There was more gold in his eyes than I remembered. Probably because his skin had just been reknitted over his soul. When he looked at me, it was with every bit of love and adoration that I had felt for the millennia we’d known each other. So why was there this distance?

  He opened his mouth, likely to explain, but before he could speak, someone else did. I hadn’t noticed the woman he’d been looking adoringly at had moved closer. I prepared to throw my ire on her, but froze.

  “Theta?” said the mystery woman.

  I couldn’t get any air in my lungs, though again, I wasn’t entirely certain if breathing was necessary beneath the surface. It was just habit.

  The form came closer. I wanted to shake my head to clear the fog, because I couldn’t believe my eyes. The woman looked like she could be my sister. She had the same dark hair, the same honey-brown features, even the same tilt to her eyes.

  “Vau?” My voice croaked with grief and pain and disbelief and hope.

  The woman nodded, but the confirmation rocked me back on my heels.

  I still couldn’t accept the possibility that it was true. My own rebirth? Sure, no problem. Zane being alive and whole? Absolutely. But my oldest and dearest friend?

  “Vau?” I had to ask again, because it simply couldn’t be her.

  “It’s me,” she said.

  And it was her. It was her too-big smile. It was that glint of wonder in her wide eyes. She stood before me, whole and happy and alive. I didn’t wait for permission as she stood before me. I enveloped her into my arms and went stiff at the impact.

  It was like a near-death experience. My life flashed before my eyes. But then I realized it wasn’t my life. It was Vau’s.

  Weakness flooded through my veins; my immortality leached out of me and humanity set in. It was the same as when I’d fallen to my death, tumbling over rocks and impacting on the bottom of the cavern.

  Only Vau had been lying on a slab as her life was stolen. She hadn’t fallen; she’d been held down. Shards pierced her skin, but not from the walls of a cave. They were in the hands of men. Her screams tore from my raw throat. And then there was darkness.

  “Oh, Theta. Theta, I’m so sorry.”

  I was on my knees, grabbing fistfuls of the warm earth. My head spun, and I tried to release the hold of the nightmarish visions. When I opened my eyes, Vau and Zane were crouched around me. Both outstretched their hands but neither touched me.

  “What was that?” I asked. “What just happened?”

  Vau reached out to me, and I flinched. Slowly, her fingers advanced. Instead of touching my skin, she let the curtain of my hair that fell over my face glide through her hand.

  “Your skin is still thin,” said Vau. “It’s easy to share my light with you.”

  “I saw you die. I felt the torment.”

  “I know,” Vau soothed. She slid my hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ear, careful not to touch the skin at the cone of my ear. “I’m sorry. I figured Eden would’ve warned you. You’ll learn to control it in time as your skin thickens.”

  A hand came onto Vau’s shoulder. Brown fingers gave her a squeeze. I looked up into the face of Epsilon. He was here too. Alive and well.

  “Hello, Theta,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”

  The last time I’d seen him, I’d been angry with him for breaking Vau’s heart. It had always irked me that we’d parted on bad terms and had never patched things up before he died. My instinct was to run into his arms, but I did not want a second showing of a friend’s death today. And so I gave him a weak smile as I put both my feet under me.

  Vau rose and stood inside of Epsilon’s embrace. I stood on my own, though my legs were as shaky as a new fawn’s. Beside me, Zane’s hands were balled into fists at his sides. Was that why he didn’t reach out to me? What didn’t he want me to see from his past?

  “There’s so much to catch up on,” said Vau. “But it will have to wait until later. Here comes our father.”

  Our father? As in Vau’s and my father? Our father? As in he was here? Vau focused over my shoulder. I turned and prepared to meet my maker.

  5

  No one was there. No, wait, that wasn’t entirely true. The air was hazy, like a mirage in the desert.

  The air felt different. The atmosphere felt heavy, saturated. Like walls were closing in on me, but I was outside.

  Something was coming closer. A light grew from the hefty haze. Brighter and brighter as it came toward me. The brilliance didn’t hurt, but I wanted to shield my eyes out of respect.

  I didn’t lift my hands to cover my gaze. Nor did I shut my eyes. I couldn’t look away.

  The blaze of light grew and grew. The rays reached outward, just far enough in front of me that I could reach out and touch. Close enough that the heat singed the raised hairs on my wrists, which I pulled against my body to protect my heart.

  The light coalesced, and a being stepped out. The light being formed limbs and took on a human shape. Skin knitted over the light, encasing the glowing warmth inside a fleshy shell.

  The knitting began at the fingertips and toes. The pattern cross-stitched up the forearms and shins. Like with Eden and Michael, the groin area was that of a doll. Just a bump of sexless flesh.

  I was looking at my father’s junk—even though it wasn’t junk. That’s when I finally shut my eyes.

  But only for a second. I urged them back open the very next instant, unwilling to miss anything. When I looked again, it was at my father’s face.

  Features formed. His skin was the color of the volcanic earth, more a ruddy red than an earthen brown. His chin was a rounded triangle with a dimple, like the backside of a shovel. His nose was long and concave; at the end it turned up. He was hairless; the same nodes and knots decorated the top of his crown in a beautiful swirling pattern that my fingers itched to touch. The hard line of his mouth instructed me to keep my hands to myself.

  My memories of my mother showed me a woman who I favored physically. Looking at my father was not like looking into a mirror. My father’s features weren’t familiar to me. We looked absolutely nothing alike. But we favored each other. We didn’t share the same features, but we shared the same energy.

  We stared at each other. Neither of us said anything. Vau broke the silence.

  “Theta, this is Gabriel, our sire.”

  Gabriel. My father’s name was Gabriel. It was such a normal human name. The name had been written about in many religious texts. Gabriel appeared in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures. He was credited with being a messenger who explained the visions of some prophets and foretold the births of others. I wondered if the prophet and my father were the same being.


  “Hi, Dad.” I waved and offered him a smile.

  The skin over Gabriel’s right eye crinkled. His mouth remained in an expressionless line. So, I didn’t get my eyebrows, my eye color, or my sense of humor from my father.

  “You may call me Gabriel.” His voice reminded me of the sound of an African djembe drum. The start of the words hit with a staccato beat and then resonated down in the belly of the hollow instrument. “You have chosen the name of Theta?”

  “No, actually, I’m—I go by Nia these days.”

  Gabriel nodded. His large eyes scrutinized me. I fidgeted under his gaze. As I searched for something to say, there was movement behind me, and I turned.

  Vau stepped back toward Epsilon. “We’ll give you two some time alone,” she said.

  It had been centuries since we’d last been in each other’s presence, but she knew me well. She knew my alarmed features screamed a distress call. And if that wasn’t enough, I mouthed the word no. This little reunion between father and daughter was painful with just the two of us. She couldn’t leave us on our own.

  But Vau tilted her head in a call to put my subligaculum on. Problem was I hadn’t worn loincloths since the invention of the chemise as an undergarment. I scrunched my face in a plea, but Vau only narrowed her eyes at me. I wanted to stomp my foot and call her a terrible older sister.

  “I’ll find you later,” she said, tilting her head meaningfully toward our father. Then she linked hands with Epsilon and headed away.

  They walked past Zane, who watched me. My distress reflected in his eyes. His body leaned forward, preparing to come to my aid. But then his gaze flicked over my shoulder.

  I didn’t turn. I watched Zane. His jaw tensed along with his fists. Resignation stole across his face.

  His eyes found mine again. They pierced mine. Warmth flooded me, strengthened me. But it wasn’t enough. I needed him by my side. I needed his arms around me. I needed him to stay.

  Zane gave me a shake of his head. Though he wanted to stay, he couldn’t. His eyes narrowed, as if to tell me that though he had to step away from me, he wouldn’t be far. He’d never been far from me. That relaxed me and loosened my anxiety. Somewhat.