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gruviafan-forever · 5 years

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JERZA- BABYSITTING

A/N: This oneshot revolves around Jerza couple. A new try on my part. Hope everyone likes it.

Few years after 100 years quest

"Oi Juvia, hurry up we have to catch the train."

Gray called out his wife, Juvia Loc- no…, Juvia Fullbuster who was hugging and crying over her baby.

The famous Gruvia couple, as called by the She-demon, Mirajane, got married 3 years back, exactly after dating for 2 whole years.

Gray, as soon as he returned from the epic 100 years quest which was successfully completed along with his teammates, didn't spare a day and confessed his love to Juvia and began to pursue their relationship.

"Gray-sama, Juvia refuses to leave her baby. Juvia is calling off the mission. She's not coming with you."

Juvia continued to wince while hugging her baby boy, Silver Fullbuster, who giggled and had his chubby arms around her neck.

The youngest Fullbuster was just 8 months old making him the youngest member of the guild at present, after Natsu and Lucy's daughter, Luna Dragneel, 2years.

Erza Fernandez, yes, now happily married to her long time crush, Jellal Fernandez, tapped her sister-like Juvia's shoulder.

"Juvia, don't worry. I will take care of him and later at evening, Jellal will join us. Just go and finish that important mission. We are here with him."

The little boy's eyes sparkled seeing his scarlet haired aunt and flashed her a toothless smile which Erza responded back along with pinching his chubby cheeks.

Gray wore his arms around Juvia's shoulders and tried to console her,

"Juvia, it's just for 3 days. I know how painful it is be away from our little man. But duty calls for especially when it's an important mission assigned by Gramps.

Erza and Jellal will take care of him in our absence. Now stop crying, it hurts to see my wife like this."

Gray kissed her temples and wiped those large tears with his finger.

"Yeah Juvia, Gray's right. Now give Silver to me. And don't worry about this cutie."

Erza took the baby from Juvia's arms and brought him towards her breasts.

Juvia nodded and gave a parting kiss on her baby's cheeks while Gray did the same and soon dashed out of the Fernandez household before Silver begans to whimper and throw tantrum sensing their absence.

"Okay cutie, now it's you and me. Soon your uncle will join us. But before that come let's feed you something to fill that tiny tummy of yours."

Erza cooed and nuzzled her nose against his chubby cheeks. Luckily, Silver didn't make a fuss due to his parent's absence.

After an hour, Jellal returned home after finishing a tiresome S-class solo quest which lasted for a week. He joined Fairy Tail as soon as they got married.

As he entered his house, Jellal was met with a beautiful sight of his lovely wife playing bricks with the little Fullbuster.

Jellal wore a soft smile on his handsome visage and approached the very engrossed duo who were on their own fantasy world.

Sensing her husband's presence, Erza smiled brightly and got up from the floor to greet him with a proper 'welcome-back home' manner.

Both simultaneously closed the gap between them and soon their awaiting, aching lips met each other to exchange the pleasantries.

Jellal snaked his arms around her hips to pull her towards his body while Erza hugged his torso tightly.

"Mrs.Jellal, I missed you."

Jellal said earnestly and kissed her forehead.

Erza gave her genuine smile,

"Yes, even I missed my Mr.Jellal. And I have a very good news. If only you want to listen to it."

Both of them were lost in their own world until the little nuts whimpered to gather the spotlight.

Erza broke from the hug and went upto Silver to carry him in her arms.

Jellal joined her and tried to grab the baby's attention by creating tiny twinkling stars with his magic.

As expected, Silver stopped crying and his big blue doe eyes began to sparkle seeing the tiny elements around him.

The couple laughed at his cute attempt to catch those shining objects.

Jellal ruffled the little guy's raven messy hairs and pinched his cheeks.

Erza passed the baby to her husband and went to get him something to drink.

Jellal sat on the couch with the baby in his hands while Silver began pulling his uncle's blue hairs which reminded his of mommy's hairs.

Jellal tried to balance Silver by making him stand on his lap and began to bounce the little guy which made Silver squeak out loud.

"My...my...look who's having fun with his uncle."

Erza exclaimed as she bought along with her a tray containing juice and some cookies which Juvia baked for the couple.

"Yeah, who wouldn't enjoy their time with me. Isn't it buddy?"

Jellal smirked which made Erza blush rivaling her scarlet hair.

Erza coughed and diverted her look from her husband due to embarrassment.

Jellal chuckled seeing his wife's pouted face and thought it has adorable.

"Okay Erza, I was wondering how did Juvia leave for mission this soon. Is the mission for a day?"

Jellal asked her his doubt.

Erza sat besides her husband and passed him the glass of juice,

"At the last moment, she called off the mission but Gray and myself convinced her.

I assured her that we will take care of her baby. Luckily, you came as expected. Now we will have to entertain this little guest for three days."

Erza smiled and began to drink her juice. Jellal made the little guy sit on his lap and held in one arm while other hand holded the glass.

"So what's the good news you were going to tell me?"

Jellal asked her remembering her words.

Erza blushed and looked at her husband fondly which made Jellal smile at her genuinely,

"We are going to be parents."

Erza slowly broke the news with a flushed face and smiling brightly.

Jellal eyes widened to due to surprise and soon millions of emotions flowed through his veins.

Erza's smile began to fall seeing her husband's confused face, according to her.

Jellal kept the glass on the coffee table and safely tucked the baby Fullbuster in between them.

"Jellal, aren't you happy?"

Erza's voice began to break. Soon Jellal caught hold of her cheeks and smiled widely with happy tears glistening his brown orbs.

"I'm very much thrilled. Thank you, Erza. Thank you. I never thought that my sins would ever be forgiven and start a life with you. But looks like all this while is real. Believe I'm really happy.

All this time I had to fight my thoughts for thinking my life with you would be a delusion.

Now I get it, it's not but it's freaking reality which I love and will cherish it for the entire lifetime."

Jellal kissed her forehead and pulled her into a hug being careful not to squeeze the tiny soul in between them.

Erza caressed his back and whispered in his ears,

"It's reality, Jellal. As always I say, your past is an accident. Now let's forget that and enjoy the moment of us being parents. It's not something which we experience very day. Right?"

Suddenly the little Fullbuster began to babble his baby drabbles which them to break from their hug.

"Looks like he's congratulating us. Isn't it, Silver?"

Erza asked the baby for which all they got was a cute toothless smile.

"Yes, little buddy. Now you will have a playmate with whom you can play."

Jellal answered his baby drabble question as if he understood.

Erza got up and passed the baby to her husband,

"Now go and take bath. Also give bath to this cutie. You need to learn all the basics of handling a baby before ours arrives. Now get going."

Erza went to kitchen to prepare dinner. Jellal smiled and blew raspberries on the Silver's tummy which made the little guy squeak,

"Buddy you will help your uncle in the learning process. Isn't it?"

All Silver did was giggle and grabbed his uncle's hairs to pull them.

#fairy tail erza #erza titania #jellal x erza #jellal fernandes #fairy tail jellal #gray fullbuster #gray #gray x juvia #ft juvia #gruvia #jerza

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whateverisbeautiful · 5 years

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Reveling in Richonne

#156: The Reward (9x16)

Every protagonist needs a reward. Even if they don’t get a happily ever after or a perfect ending, they have to get a reward for all their efforts. And Rick’s reward was/is/and will always be Michonne and the family they created.

So even though he’s not able to still witness it all yet, the fact that his family can have a joyous moment like they had in this s9 finale shows the reward of all Rick and Michonne’s hardwork and sacrifice.

And getting to watch Richonne and their family all these years has been such a treasured experience and a reward for me. So, y’all, I’m walking into this final season 9 post like...

So the finale jumps ahead a bit, to the first snowy winter we’ve really seen on the show. And it’s actually really pretty.

And y’all, you already know the main scene that I need to bring up from this finale in regards to my love for Richonne and the Grimes family. 😊🙌🏽 ❄️

But a few observations before that moment:

1. I admit I found Negan’s commentary on this messy love quadrangle hilarious. He was Jerry Springer up in that joint. 😂He was straight up giddy to be out of that cell and crack his “Father Not The Father” jokes.

2. I absolutely love seeing little Judith and RJ in their beanies and winter clothes and Judith being a good big sister by wrapping a blanket around her and RJ. ☺️

Carl took care of her and now she has a little sibling to look after. Full circle. 👌 And I cannot wait until Rick gets to reunite with his little ones. They’re too precious! 🏽

3. Judith somehow lost Dog and I was legit fearful for her cuz Daryl would lose his mind if they didn’t find his best friend before he got back lol. But seeing little RJ in this moment was adorable. How I would love if Rick and Carl would have got to be in his life and watch him grow up.

4. Michonne and co stay at the Sanctuary (which makes me sad cuz the last time she was in the Sanctuary she was all cuddled up with the famous Rick Grimes. I need that Richonne reunion asap.) The group at Sanctuary tries to figure out how they should best travel home and when they go over the map Aaron says Rick’s bridge would’ve saved them which is sad too. 😔 Rick had the right idea about that bridge all this time and it would’ve helped people just like he believed it would.

5. Michonne and Ezekiel have a talk, leader to leader, and Michonne expresses how being apart didn’t actually make them stronger and they can’t let that happen again. She reminds Ezekiel that “that charter we signed, it means something.” But that dialogue had me looking at the writers like...

Again, I wish it was “we” tho and that they had let Michonne sign her charter so that she could sign it with “Michonne Grimes”. But I digress lol. 😪

Michonne passionately says the kingdom people aren’t just King Ezekiel’s anymore. “They’re ours. And we’re gonna get them home” I was like Kingdom, it’s your lucky day cuz now that you have Michonne claiming you, you gon’ be alright. When Sis is leading, people live. 👸🏽💯

6. Judith thinks she hears Dog so she runs after him (which I was like baby girl please stop running off. She’s about to beat Carl’s record) and then Negan chases after her and again I’m not with this. I just don’t want him near her no matter how much he’s “changed” and I especially don’t want him holding her or acting as a pseudo dad. The father/daughter vibes the show might be going for...

Negan asks if Judith’s okay and gives her his coat and then he jokes that she’s doing all this running to get extra Negan time...and y’all, I really think Rick would dislike this moment. ☹️ I don’t care how harmonious Rick wanted the world to be, he def didn’t intend for Negan to be buddy buddy with his daughter.

And while yes someone needed to go after Judith so I’m glad someone helped, cuz those Alexandrians stay slacking whenever it’s time to look for some kids. But still, Negan needs to stay in his lane.

I know this show will be adamant to redeem Negan going forward tho so it’s pretty much inevitable. And the show really was working double time to redeem this guy with having him save a little girl and a dog at the same time. 🤷🏽‍♀️

7. The only thing colder than this winter weather was Carol breaking it off with Ezekiel 👀🥶 I felt really bad for the king cuz that’s a lot of loss to go through with losing your kid and then your wife leaving you. It also just makes me really grateful for Richonne cuz, y’all, there’s a lot of couples both in this show and in other shows who fall apart or get really mishandled but Richonne is so solid and so everlasting. #StayWinning

8. Michonne and Negan have an interesting exchange in the very room where Rick and Michonne were once laying down the law to Negan in the prior season finale.

Michonne thanks Negan for saving Judith and Negan brings up how last time the two were in here together Rick had just slit his throat open. Good times. 😝 Negan says Judith is a special girl and again my gut reaction was just to be like; Negan step back cuz you aren’t a pseudo dad, uncle, or anything else. 👏🏽

9. Interestingly one of the most compassionate things said to Michonne since this time jump comes from Negan in this scene. Cuz he looks at her and says “And you…you’ve been through enough.” It’s true. It’s so true. 💯

Her friends needed to express this sentiment too. You can tell it feels strange for Michonne to be having a fairly friendly moment like this with Negan so she just says “Get better.” and leaves. But then Negan asks if everyone’s okay and she questions if he cares and then they end up having a whole little conversation about how no one sees themselves as the bad guy. It’s true that from most people’s perspectives they’re the hero.

I feel like this scene was low key meant to plant the seed of Michonne and Negan having a more friendly open dialogue with each other moving forward and all I can say to that is...tread very lightly TWD lol. 🙃😑

Alright so now onto the perfect winter wonderland scene. 🤗

The group gets back to Alexandria and there’s this great aerial shot of Alexandria’s queen, Michonne being the first one to walk through the gates and then we see Judith run and hug her.

I adore that Judith runs to her with open arms just like she did in 9x14. Mom and daughter love, y’all. 🙌🏽

Mama Michonne of course checks on Judith and asks how she is and she notices Judith’s cheeks are super red so she immediately asks, “What happened?” and Judith doesn’t want to admit that the Carl in her had her running out the house and off into the frigid storm, so she instead adorably says, “It’s cold.” And Michonne smiles and hugs her again. I love their love. 😭😋

And then y’all, I’m sent straight to another galaxy when Michonne looks over and sees RJ adorably laying in the snow.

PRECIOUS. She cutely walks up to him and scoops him up into a hug and this is some of the best Mama Michonne content. 😭

Can you believe we’re here? We’re at a point in this series where Michonne can hug her son who belongs to her and Rick. Richonne is the best journey. 🙌🏽💯

Rick and Michonne’s love always felt like a character in itself. It was that evident and present and powerful. And now it’s precious to know that their love gets to take form in this adorable little boy.

I just adore seeing Michonne hug her children. And Judith’s little face of joy as she watches her mom and brother is the adorable cherry on top. More of this in season ten, please!

Michonne has hugged all the Grimes in the most beautiful way. 😭Especially, in times they’ve been in danger Michonne’s always right there to hug them and be there for them.

The Grimes are lucky to have Michonne as the matriarch. ☺️ #Royalty!

And then it gets even cuter as Judith and RJ play in the snow and Daryl gets in on the action and throws a snowball at RJ which is the sweetest thing. 😊

And RJ throws a snowball back at Uncle Daryl and I don’t know about y’all but on my TV I heard RJ throw that snowball and say “This is for not taking my dad back to Alexandria like you said you would.” 😂Was it just my TV? 😋

Lol but for real it is cute and I love seeing Daryl interact with Rick and Michonne’s son.

So then they all engage in this adorable little snow ball fight and it’s really heartwarming. This is the world Rick wanted. This is the life he wanted to give Michonne and their kids and I’m glad that in this moment his wife and kids got to enjoy the bliss he so deeply wanted to provide for them.

This is the reward. 😌

The only thing that would make this scene better is if Rick and Carl were here to join in this family fun. But Rick will get his chance. I know he will. 💯

Every season finale had pretty much always gave us a notably special Richonne moment. Season 3 Finale: “Must’ve been something else then.” Season 4 Finale: “Cuz I’m okay too.” Season 5 Finale: “I’m still with you.” Season 6 Finale: Rick being sent into a whole daze after finding her locs on that walker. Season 7 Finale: Rick finding her and hugging her after that battle and letting her know they will be the ones who live. Season 8 Finale: R&M holding hands as they head off to war.

So going into the season 9 finale I was sad that this would be the first finale without a sweet Richonne moment. But what’s great is that Richonne lives on through their family. So the finale still gave us something so precious.

If they’re going to take Rick away from us then ending on Michonne hugging both her kids in the snow is a nice touch to give us some Grimes family love. After everything Michonne went through this season I’m glad we get to see her smile and embody the sentiment she expressed to Negan in 9x04; As long as you’re still breathing then there’s life worth living.

The final moment is Ezekiel and Judith talking on the radio and before Judith leaves to do homework she tells Ezekiel, “I’ll tell my mom you said hello.” And again, I just love how often Judith says “mom”. I was hoping we’d hear Judith call Michonne mom at least once this season and we got that ten times over so I’m happy.

And y’all, I heard about the rumors leading up to the finale that Rick’s voice might potentially be heard on the radio and I was pretty certain that those rumors were just that; rumors. But you know there’s always that little tiny piece of you that hopes. And then it was some indiscernible woman’s voice so idk, we’ll see where that goes I guess.

But even though Rick being alive didn’t get foreshadowed in this finale, I have hope that at some point Michonne will learn the good news that her man is alive because once again, they’re the ones who live. They’re also #MagnetsForLife 🙌🏽😊🎉🥰

And that is everything from Season 9!

Season 9 was quite the roller coaster. Even though the show isn’t what it was, this season was a refreshing upgrade from the last two seasons. And as always, in my humble opinion, Richonne and their family was the brightest beacon of light this season. They never fail to deliver and shine.

On the eve of this s10 trailer, (Michonne’s last trailer 😭 ), I know I’m going to watch for Michonne and Danai’s final season. (And imma need this show to give both Danai and Michonne their things. Said things include but are not limited to: Their respect, their honor, their peace, their accolades, their time to shine, and their route to the movies with Rick)

But after that, it’ll be the movies I wait for. I want Michonne, Rick, Judith, and RJ content. All of it. Every second of it. 😍👌

(Side note: And I don’t want Michonne to leave Judith and RJ for any reason at all, so I seriously hope wherever she goes she takes them with her. Even though I have a feeling Judith will be around for the rest of the show, but a girl can dream that Michonne gets to leave with her kids)

Whatever happens with the show or movies all I know is I’m in it for the Grimes Family. I’m glad Andy and Danai get to move on and go thrive beyond this show. I’m grateful for the time they’ve put into these characters and I’m especially glad that their characters are alive, Richonne’s love lives, their son and daughter live, cuz this family be giving me life.

And y’all, just know that so long as Richonne is alive my love for them and my need to revel over them lives on too. So your girl is not done gushing over the GOAT couple lol.

I’ll of course have to analyze every moment in those movies but even before then I’ve already got some ideas. I’ve mentioned before how I have a non-existent top ten Richonne moments list that I don’t have written down it’s just in my head. And that’s true. Or at least it was.

Now that we’ve officially gotten every Rick and Michonne moment we’re gonna get from the series, I’ve compiled a whole Top 30 list of my all-time favorite Richonne moments ranked in order, leading all the way to my number one favorite Richonne moment. (Y’all know my extra self couldn’t stop at a Top 10 lol).

So at some point down the line, I’ll try and share that list with some updated thoughts on those scenes. And I’d love to hear your lists too!

Until then, I can’t wait for these “alleged” movies lol. They’re coming. They have to cuz I need this all to conclude with Rick and Michonne back where they’re always meant to be; together. I need Judith and RJ back with their mom and dad. I need Richonne/Grimes Family gold. A whole pot of it. And I believe we’ll get it.

I’m excited too cuz If Rick and Michonne are in a movie it’s going to be good, no matter what else goes on, cuz those two don’t know how to do anything other than be excellent. 💯And imma be there cuz that’s our family so you know we gotta be there to reunite lol. 😋🙌 🏽 🏆

I already know that reunion is about to be just like Richonne and their family...

So before I conclude this post, I really want to say a sincere thank you to everyone who read all these s9 posts and all the little dissertations I’ve done thus far. As I always say, and I always mean it, y’all are the best and have great taste in TV couples lol. I know writing these when I have some free time puts a smile on my face and if this last 30 days of posts put at least one smile on your face then it makes all this time spent worth it.

Thanks so much for letting me revel on your TL and thanks for sharing the comments, kindness, and conversations. I so enjoy hearing from you and your opinions are on point for real. Your insights make me love Richonne even more. So thank you! I genuinely appreciate the support and that even seasons later, even with all the stuff and thangs this wild show puts us through we’re still here rocking with Richonne. #Always&Forever

All that’s left to say is Richonne is amazing and the GOAT. When you have two iconic multidimensional characters played by two iconic multidimensional actors you’re gonna get magic. And that’s why a “zombie” show ended up having the greatest healthiest most beautiful love story I’ve ever seen. #GospelTruth #StayBlessedY’all #LongLiveRichonne!

gifs source: the amazing & gifted @michonnegrimes

#richonne #s9 #9.16 #blessed and highly favored #Rewarded by Richonne

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ayearofpike · 5 years

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Thirst No. 5: The Sacred Veil

Simon Pulse, 2013 441 pages, 17 chapters + prologue and epilogue ISBN 978-1-4424-6731-6 LOC: PZ7.P626 Thb 2013 OCLC: 795175747 Released March 5, 2013 (per B&N)

With all the bad guys destroyed, Sita and her friends should be safe, right? Not so fast — there’s still a nationwide manhunt going on, enhanced by the computer program that’s already told authorities about Team Vampire. On top of this, the now-headless devil’s advocate had a photo in her suitcase implying that the evils are after a sacred artifact that Sita came into contact with during World War II. To beat them to it, she’ll have to trace a past that she can’t remember in order to cancel a deal she didn’t make.

With this book, it feels like Pike is finding his stride with the modern YA genre. It’s more pages than we strictly need to tell the story, the group is given reasons for existence beyond “Sita likes us,” and the vampires finally fuck. That said, it does use some of Pike’s favorite tropes: flashbacks, Hinduism, the consistent timeline, jumping from high places, muthafuckin lizard aliens. You’re not going to mistake this for someone else’s work, especially if you’ve already read The Wicked Heart.

Yep! Pike is reusing his old assets again! This time, it’s the evil descendant of Heinrich Himmler ... well, sort of. We’ll get there. I guess it was only a matter of time before Sita had an Adventure With Nazis, considering how the Holocaust is a monster of a humanitarian travesty, relatively prominent in American minds, and it’s natural that Pike would want to explore how she might have tried to fight it. Plus it’s kind of a get-deep-quick card in terms of how your story is going to be received, and it does sell books. (I was recently at my kid’s book fair — at an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL — and was alarmed by the number of books about WWII and the Holocaust.)

Whatever it is, I am really not into white dudes fictionalizing Nazi Germany. But I read this anyway, because I’m dedicated or something.

I might as well jump in with the summary, and I’m going to try to be quick about it, even though I pretty much need to re-read the book. But as I said, there’s a lot less action in this story, and we already know Sita and her backstory from the last eight, so I don’t have to be quite as worried about leaving stuff out. Still, this book kind of comes from nowhere, so I’ll do my best to be fast yet thorough.

We pick up where The Shadow of Death left off, with Sita deciding whether or not to return to Earth. Of course she does, because she’s got friends to take care of and a headless demon channeler to bury. But in going through the kid’s effects, she finds a picture of a couple, the woman looking familiar for some reason. When she looks closer at the picture, she sees why: there’s another photo on their table of another couple, and these ones were friends and confidants to Sita in Paris in the 1940s. There are two reasons why the devil might have a picture of these people, and Sita isn’t buying the first, that it’s a link to her. It must be the other: the woman is the most likely owner of the Veil of Veronica, a sacred cloth used to wash Jesus’s face as he carried the cross and now containing some of his essence.

Sita and Immortal Boyfriend want to follow the trail, but CEO is less inclined. She feels that hiding out is going to be better for them, because sooner or later the national law enforcement search for them is going to at least shift to the back burner and it will be safer to move around the country. But when Sita calls the last number dialed on Demon Girl’s phone and gets Satan himself on the line, the decision is made: they have to get the veil before the evil does. So they drive to Vegas (again, fuckin’ Vegas), where CEO has a stash of cash and some fake IDs for everybody, which ... weird. But she buys a jet and they take off for North Carolina, where they’ve traced this couple in the picture.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Sita book if they could just travel unencumbered. They’re targeted by a couple of military jets, which Sita dispatches by jumping out of the plane and forcing one pilot to eject before using his missiles to blow up the other. Everybody parachutes to safety (well, not the military pilots) and hitchhikes with a trucker to Chapel Hill, en route to which Sita has to hypnotize a couple more cops at a roadblock (though the trucker is cool). Then they set the humans up at a hotel while she and Immortal Boyfriend go scope out the address. Right away it’s clear they’re too late: there are two dudes with critical injuries on the floor. One is the husband, and Sita manages to hypnotize him into describing the attackers and what they’ve done with his wife, only she doesn’t understand how they took her into the sky. He doesn’t know where the veil is, but they find a book written in code across four different languages. Sita also finds footprints leading away from the house ... to a charred circle in the grass, glowing with radioactivity.

The other dude on the floor showed up and tried to help, the husband says before he dies, so they decide to take him back to the hotel and see if he has more intel. Back at the hotel, Sita heals his head injury, enough that he wakes up and tells her he knows a little bit about what they’re doing but he can’t explain why or how he got the information. He does maintain that he can disable the tracking program that’s made them wanted criminals, using a mishmash of technology in a bag that they found in what was obviously his watch nest, but Sita insists that he needs to sleep first. She’s not gonna sleep, though: she’s gonna flash back to her experience in Nazi-occupied Paris, breaking a resistance leader out of a torture cell and bringing him to her friends, who are both doctors, for a little underground treatment. This is a prominent memory of the veil and how it can help soothe and calm fears, and maybe even ward off evil, which Sita needed after a long night of infiltrating a Gestapo headquarters and soaking up the terrors within.

She tells this story to Seymour and Immortal Boyfriend the next day, as they fly their new plane to New York. It's the home base of the phone number Sita dialed on their deceased spy's phone, after all, and they've traced it to a monster of a law firm that CEO can tell is shady through her own experience. How did they get the clearance to fly? Well, it seems that our mysterious new spy wasn't lying about his ability to throw a snarl at the Internet program and slow it down long enough to free up Team Vampire to slip through security. Our immortals kidnap the lawyer and get him to admit that his firm was working with the Indian girl on background checks, and also that they funnel dark money to the Pentagon for what is rumored to be military spacecraft. He doesn't get a chance to say more, though — armed mercenaries blow up the entire side of the hotel, taking him out, though Sita and Immortal Boyfriend escape over the roof and down the back stairs.

They did manage to make off with the lawyer's laptop, though, and while New Spy hacks it Sita traces him through his fingerprints, because of course there's a missing persons report out on him. In talking to the dude's wife and son, though, she's confused to learn that he's just, like, some guy. No particular skills, talents, or intelligence, just a decent dude who withdrew ten grand from his bank account and disappeared. Oh, but he did have a passion for astronomy, and in the last month before he took off he could be found staring at one star through a telescope for hours on end.

When she returns, New Spy has news: the military is definitely developing spacecraft, out at Nellis Air Force Base in, yep, fuckin' Vegas again. Seymour makes a connection from this development to the number of early NASA scientists who were reformed Nazis, but Sita warns him to shut the fuck up before he reveals too much. She tells him a little more of the story on the flight out: how she learned about changes in the Germans' military movement plans and swam across the English Channel to inform Allied forces (including a one-on-one meeting with George S. Patton, who insisted he knew her from a past life) but returned to Paris to find her SS informant murdered, her friends taken into custody, and a cold-blooded major waiting with a weird piece of tech that incapacitated her and allowed him to round her up as well. Related to the Telar torture device? Maybe. Seymour is seeing connections all over the place — not just that, but also from Sita's experiences as a prisoner of war to her interactions with the demon duke of Italy, way back when this series was still called The Last Vampire. Both times there was an artifact that supposedly had Christ's blood on it, both times she was tortured and taken prisoner, and both times she couldn't quite remember the end of the story. He might have a plan to help her remember, but we're going to have to wait to find out what it is.

There's a more pressing problem: New Spy is becoming incapacitated by swelling in his cranium. Sita takes him to a hospital as soon as they land, and he makes her swear that as soon as he's done with the procedure she'll take him wherever they go next. Yeah, Vegas isn't it, apparently, though if New Spy knows where is he ain't saying. While he's undergoing brain surgery she reads what he's managed to translate of the coded diary they found. It's a story narrated by Veronica herself, about meeting a Master (you know, one of Pike's favorite enlightened humans) and learning how to step outside both of our own thoughts and of society's restrictions and expectations. Then she goes back to the hotel to see what Seymour has planned and figure out their next steps.

Only first she has to fuck Immortal Boyfriend. Yeah, they talk about lost love and painful loneliness first, and how angry they’ve been at each other, and then they realize they might only have each other for eternity, and so it's time to hop on the meat train to Bone Town. I don't know — maybe it makes more sense than I'm painting here. I was, after all, always the dude who didn't see the intense horniness in Pike books when I read them as a teen. Still, it's felt for a while like neither of them is ready to move past Teri. Besides, Sita herself has become progressively more connected and enlightened through her various absorption of higher-level immortals and maybe gods, so what does she need a boyfriend for? The whole thing doesn't actually feel like love, necessarily ... more like a deep and abiding connection that they've decided must inevitably lead to Naked Time. And maybe I'm OK with a physical and emotional relationship that isn't the be-all and end-all of the storyline, but it still feels a little forced here.

Anyway, they go find Seymour and learn that his plan is to try to go into a mutual hypnotic trance with Sita to help her remember just what happened in that concentration camp. And it works like whoa: she starts flashbacking hardcore, to being kept in a basement cell for forty days without food or water. At the end of it the major shows up with a familiar-looking woman, and they know about her past. Like, a lot of her past, including her role in the battle described in the Mahabharata, where Arjuna called down a divine fire that obliterated a seemingly overwhelming enemy. They want her to tell them what she knows and what she saw during the battle, and torture her when it's not what they want to hear. She's chained to a pole in the courtyard, either to humiliate her or warn the other prisoners, but of course her friends from Paris find her and try to break her out. There's a mass gassing, a visit from Himmler himself, a failed attempt to unlock her shackles, and a promise to hide the improved key in her cell before the next torture session, but this time they're going psychological on her ass: they've captured her resistance leader friend and actually start flaying off his skin before she finally cracks.

As with the Nazi capture, as with the Duke of Death, it's like this part of her memory has been walled off somehow, and it took this pain to unlock it. How inconvenient that Pike took pains way back in 1994 to make it clear that Sita remembered everything that ever happened to her. But anyway, she tells the military dudes about finding Krishna during the battle and hearing him talk about alien observers watching the battle, maybe even having their own that echoes what's happening on Earth. He warns the soldiers to leave it alone, but a couple of them know what Sita is and coerce her into entering a large dome that is not safe for any human, because of an energy source that gives off a glowing heat. That's all the dudes can get out of her with this hypnosis session: she comes to all the way back to present day out of this flashback-within-a-flashback. It's easy to see, though, that the Nazis figured they could win the war with this technology, but how were they going to recreate it? Unless they somehow already had it. Unless they'd found an actual ship in India, on an artifact hunt like the ones ol’ Indiana Jones likes to thwart, and were trying to activate it using the knowledge from their literal link to the past.

Immortal Boyfriend knows where to go now: Joshua Tree National Park. You remember, where Miracle Baby was conceived, where Sita fought off the muthafuckin lizard aliens to get him back. Apparently it's in the video game that they were warned about, which IB has kept playing and recently beaten but won't describe because he doesn't want to influence Sita's genuine reaction to what he expects to happen. They bust New Spy out of the hospital and steal an ambulance to drive there, and along the way he starts dropping hints that it's not exactly the veil that these folks are after. He makes a phone call, supposedly to his superiors, but somehow Sita knows it's to whoever is trying to find them and is now pissed at this sudden but inevitable betrayal. But there's nothing for it: they have to know this meeting is happening tonight in order to get the veil-keeper back.

Seymour suggests another trance session now that they're in a spiritually powerful place, and they get some more of Sita's past. Using the female doctor friend (the one who had the veil at the time) the Nazis torture Sita into remembering the inside of the ship: the dead men who tried to enter and perished before they could exit, the exposed radioactive power source that she manages to snap back into place. She remembers blacking out and being partially rescued by Original Vampire, only to be taken hostage thanks to the same torture box and reawakening as the craft flies over the battlefield. They broke free and Sita destroyed most of what she now realizes were nuclear weapons (though one fell and incinerated Arjuna's enemies, giving a white person credit for an ancient Indian doctrinal miracle) while Original Vampire killed their captors and somehow shot the ship up above the sky. But when this is all she remembers, the Nazis go to burn her friend alive. It's enough motivation for Sita to strain for the hidden key right in front of everyone and free herself, brutally murdering the major but failing to stop the female torturer from drenching her in gasoline. Her friend smothers the flames with — you got it — the Veil of Veronica. The artifact heals Sita and gives her the strength to break them out, but when she tries to find her resistance leader lover, she's frightened away by the way the female torturer is standing outside the door, soaking up the pain of so many prisoners in bliss.

I know! It's President Coroner! Enough with the same-same, Pike! This one is even happening NOW!

So that was Sita's mistake: leaving the pain-sucker alive and running away from her fear. And here she comes, walking up the hill toward Team Vampire with her captive and a young man that looks like Himmler fucked this devil woman. Or he might be reanimated or reincarnated; Pike never deigns to explain this dude. He does explain that the evil torturing lady is the same wife of the Demon Duke from way back, even though now she’s fair instead of dark (and, y’know, had her heart ripped out). She explains that they (the Nazis) already know what happened: Sita and Original Vampire flew off into space somehow, were rescued by beings of a higher plane, and found being returned to Earth so mundane and unsatisfying that they asked to have all memories of the spaceships erased. And the ship is still here, disguised as one of the giant trees. However, the damn thing is locked and will only open for someone who's been in it before. And Sita’s the only one alive who’s done so. You see the Nazis' problem. But it doesn't matter what Sita does or tries — she can't get the sumbitch to open. And this is a problem, the woman points out, because they made a deal. And now Sita sees through her dark, evil eyes, and realizes that the devil can probably possess and direct more than one measly human.

If she can't open the thing, Devil Lady says, Sita will have to go with them, or else they'll start killing her friends. She agrees, and in saying her goodbyes learns that New Spy has managed to translate the end of Veronica's journal. It was finished by her brother, it turns out, because she was crucified as a heretic and a woman taking credit for a man's job, but in her final moments she successfully stepped outside her mind and was enlightened, and that hers is the face on the veil. So Sita figures we can all become one with the universal consciousness that drives our higher powers — the same one powering Krishna, Jesus, Miracle Teen — and so maybe she'll be OK. And this is what it takes for the spaceship to appear to everyone. She goes to it, and sure enough it opens, meaning she has control and can save her friends. But before she can go in, Devil Lady shoots her in the inferior vena cava and bails with Young Himmler. And they are never seen again. (See what I meant by "sort of" at the beginning of this article? Dude's role is so small he could have been anyone. He literally doesn’t even have a LINE.)

But now Sita is dying, and New Spy takes charge. If she gets on the ship, he explains, she can transcend time and have as much as she needs to heal. How the shit does he know this? Well, it turns out that our regular dude has been possessed by his ten-thousand-years-in-the-future self, with technological knowledge beyond anyone in the present. He’s grown up in a timeline where Germany won the war, and so there is no mysticism left, only hard science. So when he discovered a loophole through this ancient technique of viewing the past, an ability to alter his own world and bring some magic to it, he leapt at the chance. This moment — Devil Lady and Baby Himmler escaping — was his fork in the road, the way he could alter his own future. And while he’s explaining, this magical ship does all the work, healing Sita and chasing the bad guys and blowing them up. Or at least that’s what he says. We don’t see it, because we know how much Pike readers hate action sequences (good.thing the entire first half of the book wasn’t one). And now they can set back down in the timeline, wherever they want to be.

So Sita ...

goddamn, this is infuriating ...

Sita goes BACK TO ANCIENT INDIA TO KILL THE ORIGINAL VAMPIRE AGAIN. Only this time she’s gonna do it when he’s an adult, when he comes to whisk her away from her family.

Only he somehow knows about it. He knows everything. He knows about her plans, her ideas, her potential future. But he also knows that Sita’s greatest regret is that she was never able to live her normal human life with her truest love and her child, and is willing to accept his own death if she carries it out. And she realizes: Immortal Boyfriend came back too. And he’s inside his father, somehow. And she’s not sure she can kill him.

And that is where this mother fucking vampire saga, spanning eight books and almost twenty years, leaves us hanging.

According to Wikipedia (which, take it with a grain of salt; there’s no citation and I’ve already deleted two entries for books that don’t exist), Pike is working on three more Sita books, and plans to self-publish when they are done. He said that two and a half years ago. Are we ever going to see such a thing? Is the eleventh book in this series, as promised, the actual DEFINITIVE END of the Sita saga? Will we ever find out? Is he just gonna George Martin us until he dies? I say don’t hold your breath for another Thirst book. But I also thought Pike was done with YA when Alosha trailed off, and I thought he was done with YA when The Blind Mirror came out after a three-year absence, AND I thought he was done with Sita when she stabbed her dead best friend in the uterus and killed the unborn demon. So how much does what I say matter?

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richonnejustdesserts · 6 years

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Yuletide Medicine (25 Days Of Richonne Tumblr Exclusive) by @blacklitchick

The joy of the Holiday is lost on both Rick and Michonne until the right medicine transforms their Christmas Eve.

It had seemed like the altruistic thing to do when Rick volunteered to take his aunt’s shift as a Salvation Army bell ringer after she came down with the flu. Most didn’t want the Christmas Eve shift, but the magic of the holiday season was lost on Rick that year. His kids would be two states away from him when they opened presents on Christmas morning. He figured it was better to do some good instead of moping around his empty house. But after two hours of ringing that annoying bell in icy temperatures, he was over it. The multiple looks of annoyance and aggravation he received as last-minute shoppers rushed past him and his frozen fingers made him want to pack it in early. The three dollars he collected after being on duty for two hours didn’t seem worth the hassle.

He tossed the bell and red apron into the bucket before reaching up to pull the Santa hat off his head. A split second before his hand touched his head he heard a small gasp and scream. His reflexes kicked in as he saw a body fall towards him from his peripheral vision. The new weight in his arms wasn’t as much of a shock to his system as the most beautiful yet haunting pair of brown eyes he’d ever seen, staring up at him.

It took it her being in waves: her dark skin, the long locs cascading down her shoulders from under a white knit cap, the matching white peacoat, the way her mouth slightly opened as she took in quick breaths that floated up into the air like smoke. The seconds ticked away as their eyes bored into each other’s and people continued to rush around them.

The small pellets of precipitation that began hitting his face jerked Rick out of their intense trance. His voice was soft yet rough as he opened his mouth. “You OK?”

The woman still stared up at him. A look of he couldn’t decipher crossed over her features before she shook herself and cleared her throat. “Umm..yes…I think so. I tripped over something on the sidewalk. Th…thanks…” The soft yet warm timbre of her voice trembled. She closed her eyes to regain her composure. When she opened them again she smiled up at Rick. Her whole face lit up. He took in a sharp breath as she looked even more beautiful than he first thought.

“Thank you,” she began again, “for catching me. Falling onto an icy sidewalk wouldn’t have been fun.”

Rick smiled back at her. “No. I don’t imagine it would have.”

The conversation trailed off as they caught each other’s eyes again. His gaze traveled to her perfectly shaped lips and back up again. Only a man roughly pushing into him while trying to get into the store they stood in front of broke the spell. Rick grabbed onto the woman tighter so she wouldn’t slip from his grasp.

“It would probably be a good time to let me up,” the woman said as her hands clutched onto his forearms.

“Oh, right. Sorry.” Rick mentally chided himself for being so enamored with a stranger as he helped the woman to her feet. When she tried take a step she started to fall again before Rick caught her. “Steady now,” he said.

“Ouch…shit…my ankle.” Her voice was tinged with shock and pain.

Rick could see her right ankle had already started to swell in her suede heeled boots. “Looks like the fall was nastier than we thought.” He gestured across the street. “There’s an Urgent Care in the hospital over there. Let me take you to get checked out.”

The woman pulled away from him while almost falling again. She steadier herself by grabbing onto the red bucket. Tears frame her lashes as she shook her head vehemently. “No. I’m fine. I mean I don’t know you. I just need to get home and wrap and soak my ankle.” She tried to take another step, but couldn’t put any weight down on the ankle. She cried out in pain as the tears broke away from her lashes and ran down her face.

Rick grabbed onto one of her shoulders. “Oh, hey, hey. Shh, shh. Don’t cry. It’ll be OK. It’s probably only a simple sprain.”

The woman shook her head again. “I know but…,” she sighed, “I’m supposed to be on stage tomorrow dancing the lead in The Nutcracker. But now,” she gestured towards her ankle,” it’s probably not going to happen. Would have been the only highlight of my Christmas.”

Rick took in her graceful body. It made sense she was a dancer. Even her fall was elegant. “You never know until you have it checked out. You may be good to go for tomorrow’s performance. We’re go over to the Urgent Care and it’ll be fine.” He reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet. “Here’s my ID and badge. I’m a Sheriff’s Deputy. Rick Grimes. You can trust me.”

The woman stared at his ID then looked closely back at him. “You work for Sheriff’s department?” Rick nodded. “So does my sister. She’s a deputy too. Do you know Sasha Williams?”

He crossed his arms and tilted his head as he put the pieces together. “Sasha’s your sister? She’s one of my good friends in the department.” He smiled. “It all makes sense now. That means you’re Michonne Williams. Her ballet dancin’ sister she’s always braggin’ about and praisin’.”

Michonne smiled showed her slight embarrassment. She knew how sister could go on and on with the praise. “That would be me.”

“Now you really have to let me help you. If I have to tell Sasha I left her injured sister in the cold on Christmas Eve she might punch me in the jaw.”

Michonne laughed. “Yeah she just might.” She sighed and wiped at her eyes. “OK. Take me over to the Urgent Care.”

Rick nodded. “OK.” He wrapped his arms around her waist and helped her limp slowly across the street.

****

Almost two hours later, Michonne maneuvered herself back into the waiting area on a pair of crutches. She was surprised to see Rick still sitting in the same spot she left him when the CNA wheeled her back to the exam rooms. He quickly stood when her saw her.

“You’re still here,” she said.

“Of course. I wasn’t gonna leave without knowing you were all right.”

She smiled. “Thanks, Rick. You’re quite the gentlemen. I called Sasha when I was back there and she confirmed that I was in very good hands.”

He smiled back. “Good. So what’s the verdict?”

Michonne eased her body down in a waiting room chair and Rick sat beside her. “It’s not broken, thank God. It’s a sprain like you said, but a pretty bad one. I won’t be doing any dancing tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Me too. I guess that’s why I started crying out there. I’m not quite feeling the magic this year. Only thing I had was dancing.“ She tossed her locs behind her shoulder and shook her head. “This is the first Holiday season since my marriage ended. I had our son, Andre, for Thanksgiving so my ex gets him for Christmas this year. First time I won’t see my Peanut’s face when he opens his gifts. I was looking forward to tomorrow’s performance because I knew it would feel good to bring some joy to the people in the audience even if I wasn’t feeling much myself. Now I won’t even have that, you know.”

Rick patted the knee on her non-injured leg. “I get it. My ex-wife has the kids this year. That’s why I was out here in the cold ranging that damn bell. Tryin’ to do some good while feeling low.”

Michonne put her hand over his. “Looks like we understand each other Deputy Grimes.”

“Looks like we do.”

Their eyes met again in what was beginning to become a habit for them.

Michonne broke the trance first this time as she focused her eyes down to her ankle. “I was out there rushing to find him a gift before him and his Dad leave for Savannah tonight. UPS lost the gifts I ordered for him. I wanted him to have at least one present to open from me in the morning.” She looked at her watch. “They leave in about an hour. I probably won’t make it in time.” She looked back into Rick’s eyes. “He may not think about me at all tomorrow.”

Rick stared back. “Well, we can’t have that. I happen to know that this hospital has a pretty nice gift shop. I’m sure we can find somethang for him there.”

She knitted her brow. “You think?”

“I know.”

“Do you know what ten-year old boys like for gifts?”

“Being that my son was a ten-year old only two years ago, I think I can make an educated guess.”

Michonne smiled at him. “Well, OK then.”

He smiled back. “OK.”

***

A half-hour later they sat in front of the large window in the hospital cafeteria, watching the snow that had been threatening to fall all day blanket the streets. Michonne’s foot was propped on a chair as they sipped hot chocolate.

“I know I keep thanking you, but Andre really is going to love this virtual reality game you picked out. He’s still so young, but already a technology wiz. This is right up his alley.” Michonne patted the wrapped box in her lap. It was just their luck the gift shop was offering free gift wrapping with all toy purchases.

Rick nodded at her with his lips slightly upturned in a smile. He basked in her appreciation. “I was happy to do it. I’m also happy you ex agreed to stop by here on their way out of town so you can give your son the present.”

“Yeah. Me too. Mike’s a wonderful man. A great father. And wasn’t a bad husband. We just weren’t meant to go the long haul in marriage.”

“Same with my ex-wife. I used to see divorce as a failure, but it doesn’t negate all the good the relationship brought to you. And it doesn’t mean you won’t ever find that type of happiness again. Or even somethang better.”

Michonne sipped her hot chocolate and nodded at him with a slight smile on her face. “Sometimes an ending is a beginning in disguise.” She pointed across the street. “Looks like your Salvation Army bucket is filling up with snow. Should you go rescue it?”

Rick shook his head. “Nah. My shift was a bust. I’ll just make a donation in my aunt’s name, and never volunteer again.”

“I have to admit though,” she said as she turned her attention to the top of his head, “the Santa hat looks better on you than it does Kris Kringle.”

He snatched it off with an embarrassed grin. “I didn’t realize I still had that on.”

Michonne laughed and looked back to the wintery scene outside the window. “You know they say if you witness the first snow of Christmas Eve all your wishes for the new year will true.”

Rick raised an eyebrow at her. “Really?”

She smirked at him. “No. I just made that up.”

Rick laughed. “Not a bad sentiment though. I have a few wishes I wouldn’t mind comin’ true.” He held the Styrofoam of hot chocolate in both hands as he looked down as his worn cowboy boots then back up at Michonne’s smiling face again. “You know there’s this restaurant about ten miles from here that makes a great pot roast every Christmas. It’s ‘bout the only place that’s open around here on the holiday.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“I won’t be dancing so my Christmas plans are non-existent at the moment. Since Sasha is working tomorrow, and our family is in Texas, I was thinking about hibernating in my apartment, eating frozen pizza and binging on 90s romcoms. But now that pot roast is an option I may have to reconsider.”

“It’s the best in town. Great apple pie too. The place has a jukebox that plays old Christmas songs. It’s the right medicine to get over the yuletide blues.” He winked at her.

Michonne laughed. She held up her cup of hot chocolate to “clink” it with his in a toast. “Maybe this Christmas won’t be so bad after all.”

Rick’s smiled big and bright enough to rival any holiday decoration. “I know it’s looking up for me.”

#holiday!richonne #richonne #richonne fanfiction #rick grimes #michonne #25 days of richonne: bonus #author: blacklitchick #merry chrsitmas dear followers 💕#25 days of richonne #christmas!richonne

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alevelstunning-blog · 7 years

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ayearofpike · 6 years

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The Cold One

Tom Doherty Associates, 1995 394 pages, 38 chapters + epilogue & 12-page prologue ISBN 0-812-51245-6 LOC: PS3566.I486 C65 1995 OCLC: 31289835 Released December 28, 1994 (per B&N) Mass printing December 15, 1995 (per B&N)

The Cold One is no longer under guidance from its external voice. Without this incessant instruction, it does not know what comes next anymore. All it knows is that its destiny is to destroy humanity — an outcome that it has no feelings or concerns about whatsoever. What exactly is this creature? Where did it come from? How will it carry out its inevitable mission? We're going to have to read about a whole bunch of other people, and how the Cold One connects to them, to find out.

Oof. This book is a monster, which is part of why it's taken me over a week to write a new post. (The other part is, you know, stuff.) There's a lot going on, and even though a lot of it ties back to stuff Pike's written before, this is a new story with new uses for the same elements. In that vein, I was surprised to find that I didn't remember a single word or a single plot point out of this story — which allowed me to no doubt be freshly disappointed by the rushed ending.

I mentioned that there are a bunch of characters. For the first time in a while, Pike's writing from multiple viewpoints again, which makes me unsure how to best approach this summary. It probably makes the most sense to just begin at the beginning and describe the people and their doings as they appear in the narrative. It won’t be the fastest way to cover this book, but let’s be real: that’s not what I’m here for.

That prologue? It's two prologues, actually. We start with Penny Hampton, a rehab nurse at a hospice facility who works on unresponsive patients so that they don't totally atrophy while comatose. She's creeped out by one particular patient who has been there since before anybody can remember, and this is justified when the power goes out and she gets her breath taken away — literally — while manually respirating her. Worse is when the patient uses her first living breath in years to speak: just two words, one of which Pike doesn't tell us right now because it would give too much away I guess. Oh, and this is the last time we hear directly from Penny, which is a little bit of a rip, especially toward the end. We'll get there.

The second prologue is from the perspective of the Cold One Itself. You read that right — whenever It narrates, Its preferred personal pronoun is It, capital I. (Which might make my writing awkward in this entry as I attempt to avoid using "it" for other things.) We discover that It has been guided by a voice (or as It says, a "Voice") that has just stopped, and now It has awakened into Itself somewhere in Baja California. It no longer knows what comes next, but It knows that ultimately It will be responsible for the death of humanity. And It decides to start with the dude that picks It up hitchhiking. I'm not totally sure this was necessary as a prologue; I think it would have been just fine as Chapter One, seeing as it ties into the continuation of the story. We get plenty more chapters from the Cold One's POV, so it wouldn't have felt particularly out of place to have this start the story proper.

But how we launch is in a dream, inside the brain of journalist and educator Peter Jacobs. He's fishing with an old and dear friend, a beautiful girl who catches a creepy sea monster and then tries to undo his pants, but he's woken by the ringing phone. On the other end is a creepazoid who implies that he knows something about the mysterious and gruesome death of a young woman two weeks before. He hangs up before Peter can get any specifics out of him, but it feels weirdly like an extension of the dream. He does manage to record most of the conversation, to go over at work.

We learn a little more about Peter here as he prepares for his day: how his roommate is a mentally handicapped friend with whom he's grown up in foster care, how his job is writing a nationally-syndicated column that promotes good news in a somewhat cynical voice, how he had a girlfriend who got pregnant and had a miscarriage and left him with no explanation just that fast. None of this is covered in much depth here, which is OK because it allows us to fill in the blanks and then be surprised when Pike fills them in later on.

Peter plays the tape for his editor, who wants him to go to the police. As it happens, the police are investigating another unusual death, and ask him to come to the scene. The MO is totally different — a dude smothered and then stabbed in the heart — but it's linked to the other girl by a similar fingerprint. In fact, there have been half a dozen killings split between these two methods that are tied by the same print. I'm not sure why these cops are so eager to tell Peter about it, if he's a journalist, even though he's said he's not going to write about the deaths. Convenient storytelling, I guess.

Our next character is Jerry Washington, a high-school dropout and South Central gang member who is trying to get out of the game. The big man won’t let him leave, though — in fact, we meet Jerry as he's carrying out a hit on a rival gang leader. This whole part is kind of hyper-violent and unnecessary, but you know, adult fiction. And again, I could do without Pike writing minorities in LA who belong to inner-city gangs as the only native non-whites in his story. Ultimately, Jerry blackmails his boss into letting him walk and takes off for Malibu, where he meets a hot young thing who is up for a little danger and intrigue. This is Susan Darly, and she and Jerry quickly fall in love/like/lust and become each other’s world, like you do in a teenage relationship. But one day, as they're bodysurfing, Susan doesn't come back up, and Jerry can't find her. Eventually he does — on the beach down the opposite end of the current, a way she'd never have been pulled naturally, being respirated by a long-haired woman. And Susan, who wasn't breathing at all, starts again, thank goodness. OR SHOULD WE

Now we meet Julie Moore, a psychology doctorate student who is studying the meaning of near-death experiences. She speaks with an older woman who's had one, and is totally spooked by the clarity and authority the woman evokes in talking about crossing over and reviewing her life as opposed to the more familiar way she speaks on mundane matters. (Everything-old-is-new-again point: the timeline of life as a single viewable document, used in Eternal Enemy and Remember Me 2.) Julie is also spooked when the woman says she has a message specifically for her, about not fearing the end of life. It's so creepy that she leaves the hospital room without asking all of her questions.

As it turns out, there's a doctor in the hospital at the same time who has done a vast amount of research on near-death experiences, and Julie wants to pick his brain. Dr. Lawrence Morray is less than amenable to this at the present moment, but he does invite her to look him up later, at which time he may share his research. So Julie goes home, has a shower, and then has to fend off a home intruder who turns out to be her ex-boyfriend being grossly intrusive. He's supposed to be a creep, so we won't feel bad later when he gets mutilated and killed. Spoilers! But for now he just walks out and leaves a mess.

Meanwhile, Dr. Morray has a late-night appointment assessing the need for heart surgery on one of his patients. They schedule the procedure, and then he goes home to his wife Sara, to whom he feels unusually connected and compelled, if not actually in love. She mentions a young girl almost drowning on the beach and then offers to make dinner for them, and while she does Dr. Morray goes into his office (which is actually a lab) and stares at a wall safe that exhibits signs of life even though he hasn't put anything in there for two months.

We whip back to the Cold One, who considers killing a child to observe its mother's reaction, and then succumbs to a street preacher's saving throw or whatever in an attempt to feel something. (I guess I should mention, too, that outwardly the Cold One looks like an attractive woman, and It seems to know how to interact with unturned humans so as to avoid arousing suspicion that It is not.) Neither of these things has an effect on It (and It actually decides against killing the kid to avoid making a scene), and so It goes to find the man who gave It a ride north and give him a job. It has successfully turned him into ... well, not another Cold One, but certainly an unfeeling monster with inhuman strength and a craving for flesh and blood. It calls the monsters who survive Its turning "bastards" and acknowledges that they will have to be destroyed before It can successfully take the necessary step toward creating the true downfall of humankind.

Back to Peter: he's gotten another call from the creepy guy, who asks to meet him at the museum of natural history. The cops wire him up and set him loose, hoping to catch the monster. At the same time, Julie calls Dr. Morrow’s house and gets Sara, who invites her to drop by that evening. She waits outside for him, and when his car pulls into the garage and immediately back out, she follows it. To the museum, happy accident. But it's not he who gets out — it's Sara, there to work on a drawing. Julie decides to go after her anyway, thinking she might be more accommodating than her husband. But when Peter sees her and starts talking her up, Julie hangs back, intimidated but also somehow instantly attracted to him. She does corner him as he's leaving, and they go for coffee together, and they're more honest with each other about themselves than they've been to anybody else in LA. So we're pretty sure they're going to see each other again.

Jerry, meanwhile, hasn't seen Susan since that day on the beach, when her parents panicked that he was black and kicked him out of the hospital. He tracks her down at her school, but she's so dark and empty and ... well, cold, that he freaks out and bails, straight to the hospital, where he tries to get more information about how she was treated. The doctor who saw her volunteers that she checked out earlier than he would have liked, and that if Jerry wants a more thorough psychological assessment he might consider contacting Julie. After all, Susan did nearly die, and Julie is the expert on such matters.

Right now, though, she's on a date with Peter, which ends up back at his place. She’s totally sprung on him, and Peter likes her just fine, but he can’t stop thinking about Sara even as they’re making out and getting hot and heavy. His roommate walks in and interrupts them half-undressed, which kills the mood, and so Peter goes to check his messages. There’s one from the police detective, letting him know that there’s been another killing — and what ho, it’s Susan Darly’s ex-boyfriend. They’re holding Jerry on suspicion after his storming of the school, though he insists that it was Susan.

Peter realizes that Julie’s mentioned Jerry this evening — he left a message on her machine, worried about Susan. They go back to her apartment and listen to the message, and it doesn’t jibe with what the detective told him. Here they become more honest: Peter tells Julie the truth about his sting operation trying to unearth the mystery killer, and Juile tells the truth about having followed Sara Morray and who she is. Peter wants to talk to Sara himself, and Julie doesn’t really like this but she gives him the number. It’s weird how hard she’s fallen after two dates, right? But Julie insists that there’s something special about Peter, even though Peter thinks of himself as pretty cold and emotionless. Still, he does stay at her place overnight, because desire ≠ love.

The Cold One doesn’t really understand either of these things, but It is checking them out with the street preacher. It has picked up enough cues that he desires It, and so It decides It will try for some kind of feelings or emotions by making sex with him. But then he comes too fast and so It rips his ribs out. No, seriously, It is still trying to figure out whether It can have attachments or feel loss, and figures that if It truly loves the preacher then It will mourn his death. Even if It is responsible. But no — It feels no shame or pain at ruining this man, and walks out to leave him dying painfully on the floor.

* * *

And now we jump to a whole new section, to a whole new continent, to a whole new narrator, who I can’t really figure out why he actually belongs in this story. Surely there could have been a more elegant way to describe the ancient demon that awakens from induced slumber to teach the people of Los Angeles where they have come from and how to reach their desired end. Instead, we get him followed by Govinda Sharma, a dam engineer who has forsaken his religion and returned to India after the senseless death of his pregnant-to-term wife and their unborn child. But like ... at least it’s a brown person who isn’t a gangbanger.

Govinda has rediscovered religion, in a way: his company’s runner has introduced him to a Master, a young Jesus-looking mystic who helps him find peace through meditation and specific breathing techniques. It’s making Govinda feel better than he has since burying his wife. So he doesn’t really think twice when the Master summons him with a job: follow Rak, the immortal monster who has awakened and is leaving his cave for the first time in five thousand years.

Rak was accomplished in a technique called Seedling, which uses the sexual chakra of the body to bring about unquestioning obedience in potential followers. Have I mentioned Seedling before? Pike brought it up in some of his other stories, where it was important that someone be hypnotized and acting against their pattern but not necessarily their will. Most specifically, Helen used it in The Immortal. Certain people are born with an ability to tap into it (typically the leaders we see as charismatic and dangerous), but Rak could inflict it without any concern. This ultimately made Rak so dangerous that Krishna (remember him? Sita’s buddy?) had to overpower him with a mystical weapon analogous to an atomic bomb, which blinded him, killed most of his followers, and knocked him out for millennia. But he’s awake now, so obviously is a totally safe person for Govinda to go after.

He doesn’t go alone: he brings the runner and his younger brother with him, so that they can watch Rak in shifts and make sure he doesn’t lose them. But one night they all accidentally fall asleep, and wake up with a cobra sitting on the youngest one’s chest. Govinda tries to get the kid to sit still while he finds a stick to knock the snake away, but the kid panics and grabs at it and it bites him in the hand and the kid dies within moments. I’m not totally sure that’s how cobra venom works? But obviously Govinda isn’t going to sacrifice another child to this jungle — or to Rak’s black magic, sending a snake after them, which is what it feels like here. So he sends the other brother to get help and follows Rak all the way to the Delhi airport, where they both get tickets on the next flight to Los Angeles.

* * *

Back to Juile: she meets Jerry in a coffee shop to talk about Susan. His description is not really precise enough for Julie to figure out what’s wrong, but he doesn’t want the two of them to meet, knowing that something bad will happen to Juile if they do. So he takes off, and then Julie calls her dissertation chair to talk about the issue — and about Peter, who hasn’t called since they did it three days ago. The chair thinks she should call him, and also try to get in touch with Dr. Morray about his research. As doctoral students do, she puts work first — but Dr. Morray is curt and brusque, upset as he is about some journalist in his house.

Yep: Peter called Sara and they’re flirting with each other. She says that she and her husband don’t actually talk; that she didn’t even know about his all-consuming research of years prior until Julie called to see if she could come over. She’s an artist, and she shows Peter her paintings, and this is where Dr. Morray comes in and gets all upset. So she walks Peter out and kisses him goodbye, and like ... gross? Am I a prude to want someone to be faithful and true, close out a relationship before starting another one? This whole thing really annoyed me — and I get it, with Peter and Sara being who they are (we’ll get there), but I don’t have to like it.

We’re back with Jerry as he walks up to Susan’s house. She’s creepy and gross, worse than she was at school, and she won’t give straight answers. No, that’s not it — she gives NOTHING but straight answers, and they’re not answers that make Jerry feel better about how she’s acting. It turns out that when she didn’t get out of the water, it wasn’t an accident: she was PULLED under by the woman who respirated her, and ever since she’s wanted to eat dudes. And yep, she killed her ex-boyfriend, and then she killed her parents, and now she’s going to kill Jerry. His gun does no good; she kicks his hand INTO THE WALL before he can fire it, and then starts to take his pants off with lust in her eyes and blood in her mouth. And this is the last we hear from poor Jerry.

Peter now gets home, and guess who’s there? Julie is showing the roommate some things that Peter knows are IQ tests and mind exercises, and he doesn’t really like this. Which ... I don’t really get Peter’s objection to his slow roommate, whose IQ has been pegged at 60, getting some help from a caring and thoughtful friend. I understand that he doesn’t want his friend to feel ostracized or bad about himself, but this is a sweet and thoughtful woman who has been nothing but good to Peter and his friend. Maybe let her talk to him, work with him, help him step up?

So they talk, Peter apologizes, Julie goes home, and then the creep calls, but Peter isn’t scared this time and doesn’t alert the police. Weird? Instead, he calls the newspaper with a pitch on a possible story: that Dr. Lawrence Morray is somehow connected to the creepy murders. He asks his editor to dig around for information on Dr. and Mrs. Morray — and learns that she is not the doctor’s first wife, as Sara has intimated. Definitely more to investigate.

Meanwhile, Rak and Govinda have landed at LAX. Rak is still in a loincloth, but somehow hypnotizes a college basketball player into giving him a spare set of clothes. Then they take off, walking God knows where. Govinda is careful to keep his distance as they walk from the airport to the beach and then north to Malibu. Yeah, walk — Google Maps says 20 miles. This is a long-ass walk for a thirty-year-old desk jockey, and by the end of it he’s almost hoping for his own snake.

Peter’s story chase has taken him to San Francisco, to the apartment of Dr. Morray’s sister, who has nothing but lovely and wonderful things to say about Larry’s wife. His first wife, that is — they don’t really talk anymore, and so she doesn’t know much about Sara. But Sandy’s death was so tragic, the way she fell off the boat they were using in Mexico and drowned. Peter didn’t know that Dr. Morray was there when she died, and this is suspicious to both him and the editor. He decides to fly to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to try to meet with a mutual friend of Larry’s and Sandy’s, at the behest of the editor who won’t really tell him why yet.

Julie’s got her own investigation to follow. She hasn’t been able to get in touch with Jerry (wonder why) and so goes to Susan’s house, where she gets the same cold and icky vibe, along with the stench of blood and decay after, what, a week or two of parent and boyfriend carcasses rotting in the house. Julie is smart enough not to go all the way in, and runs away home at her first opportunity, where there’s a message from Sara Morray on her machine. It seems that Sara is intrigued by Julie’s research, and by her husband’s, and since she can’t get him to talk about it she might as well ask the grad student (because that’s all we can talk about, is our research).

Peter makes it all the way to Iowa (nonstop and first-class from SFO to CID, which does not now exist) before he learns just why his editor was so eager for him to be out there. It seems that there is no death certificate for Sandra Morrow, and the journalist’s investigative digging instinct led the editor to learn that she is being kept alive by machines at a clinic an hour out of town. (I’m hoping to learn a little more about Iowa in the comments ... specifically why Peter wouldn’t have been better served just flying to Des Moines. This is your moment, @mildhorror.) So he goes and poses as Sandra Morrow’s son, and ends up talking with: you got it, Penny Hampton. Remember her? She tells Peter the two words that came out of Sandy’s mouth just weeks ago: child, cold. She also tells him that she’s had asthma since trying to respirate his “mother,” and as repulsed as she is by Sandy she now feels compelled to keep her alive. As though her death will mean Penny’s to come.

There’s a whole chapter about Dr. Morray carrying out his cardiac procedure with the patient from earlier. The guy says he hears music as he’s going under, which ties into Larry’s research about near-death experiences. Ominous? Probably, considering he miscalculates with the balloon angioplasty and ruptures the inferior thyroid vein and kills the dude. He gets home all pissed off to find Julie administering a Rorschach test to Sara, which Dr. Morray thinks is a waste of time. And Julie kind of hopes so, because Sara is freaking her out with non-standard and sociopathic responses. Sara asks Julie not to tell Peter, and before Julie can think too much about this she has to excuse herself and get the hell out. But before she can get too far, Rak steps in front of her car and asks what she was doing in the doctor’s house. Without even thinking about who this giant blind Indian might be or what he is to them, Julie sort of word-vomits all over him and then asks how he knows the Morrays and what he thinks of them, specifically Sara.

“She cold.”

Back in ... I don’t know, Muscatine? Peter is trying to throw his weight around to get Sandra Morrow’s records. He has to call in a favor with his police officer friend, and then it’s partly in Spanish (remember, Mexico) and all in doctor handwriting, but he determines that yes, she drowned thirty years ago and has been on the machines here ever since. But there is a little oddity: she was pregnant when she was admitted to the facility, and she carried to term and delivered nine months to the day after her accident. So now Peter wants to track down the baby and see if that gives him any more info.

Dr. Morray, it turns out, actually was kind of freaked out by the inkblot test, especially since Sara was not blind to Julie’s reaction and now thinks she’s empty. So he goes back to work, of course, and who should show up but Rak. He tells the doctor a story of a young man who would dive to the bottom of a lake using reeds to breathe, and when the other kids got jealous and stole his reeds — his breath — he didn’t die but couldn’t rejoin humanity. Obviously Larry doesn’t know what this means yet, but Rak doesn’t have time to spell it out for him.

In the meantime, the Cold One has figured out what It needs to do to take the next step in monster making. It tells Its bastards to sacrifice themselves making a gory mess in a mall, and then decides to eliminate Julie Moore as she is too close to Peter Jacobs. This bit here feels like it gives away too much too soon, but again, I’m still enjoying the story as it doesn’t totally spell out what’s happening and I can piece it together. So the Cold One goes to Julie’s apartment and finds her ex and his lawyer there waiting for her. And It figures, why the hell does It have to hang around to kill Julie when It could just turn these two into bastards and make them do it? Efficiency!

Obviously Peter hasn’t been able to get the adoption agency to give up its files — he has to call in another favor with his cop buddy. But he learns that there was a girl, adopted by a family, where both parents died and the brother (also adopted) was in a mental institution, but the dad’s sister still lives in Iowa City. He kisses Sandra Morray goodbye before he leaves ... why? Peter doesn’t know, but maybe there’s something to Penny’s previously stated connection with her. And then he goes to the sister’s house, where he learns that the daughter was always kind of off and freaky, even when she was adopted at five days old, even though she was a wonderful artist. The brother had asthma and anxiety and willingly chose to go to the institution when he was 18, and then when the girl was a few months shy of high school graduation both her parents died and she took off for California. Peter doesn’t want to, but he asks if the woman has a picture — and sure enough, this weird artist girl is Sara Morray. Ew, she married her dad!

And now we’re suddenly in the perspective of the police detective, because Pike just can’t fuckin’ help himself. This is another too-gory chapter that serves no purpose except to kill off the bastards and I guess make the book more adult. It seems that there is a group of weirdos literally tearing people apart in the mall, and the detective is needed on the scene. When he gets there, the monsters are barricaded in the sporting goods store, and there’s a trail of gore and viscera leading up to it. Fortunately, there are only two left, but unfortunately they have unlimited hunting ammunition, or however much the store has in stock, which is enough. The detective decides to go in through the air duct, and he manages to take down one of the creatures with a lucky head shot, but the other one blasts him in the shoulder with her shotgun. Yeah, her. Of course it’s Susan Darly, the last monster alive, cold and eager to keep killing. But the detective empties his revolver into her, and finally she stops moving. And that is the end of the mysterious monster killings storyline. Seriously, we never see the detective again.

But now Julie shows up at her place, and her ex is there, and he is determined to get in one last lay before he kills her. I told you this asshole was a gross monster who we wouldn’t be sad to see die. And boy does Julie kill him. She stabs him in the neck with a letter opener, she drops a ten-gallon fishtank on his dick, she hits him in the face with a body powder he’d been allergic to when they were dating, and then she drops a TV on his head, which (back in the day when TVs were heavy as shit) crushes his skull. And then the phone rings, and it’s Sara Morray, and she wants Julie to come over and talk. Obviously, Julie doesn’t want to, but she feels like she HAS to. Seedling!

And also now Peter has gotten an audience with the doctor who was Larry and Sandy’s mutual friend, the reason that Sandra Morray is vegetating in Iowa rather than somewhere closer to her husband. It seems that this guy dated her first, but Larry stole her away and they got married really fast. He’s tried to be happy for them, because she obviously loved him back, but he also knew that Larry had a temper, and in fact he’s pretty sure that’s how the accident happened. That Larry hit Sandy because she was pregnant and refused to get rid of it, and that she got knocked overboard and nearly died. Larry managed to keep her alive until they got to shore and medicine, but there was no way she would ever wake up. Old love and anger bade this doctor to take over Sandy’s care, but because he’s not the legal guardian he couldn’t just end her life, which is why she’s still on machines after thirty years. He did deliver the babies, though, and wants to know what Peter knows about them.

Babies. Plural. Twins. A boy and a girl.

We remember that Peter’s a foster kid. He certainly remembers that. And I don’t begrudge him leaping to conclusions here, considering everything he’s been through with Sara and Sandra and the monster killers and all. But ... are you trying to tell me that there were twin babies placed with an adoption agency at the same time, and the agency has detailed information about what happened to the girl but fuck-all on the boy? Like, nobody even bothered to go, hey detective journalist guys, don’t you want to know about BOTH of Sandra Morray’s coma-born babies? Or maybe, yeah, we have that record on file — which child are you asking about?

* * *

Good building and scaffolding of a premise so far, right? It’s too bad that from here, the narrative kind of dribbles to a halt. And before we can get to the closure of Peter and Sara and Julie and Dr. Morray and everyone else (except the cops, like I mentioned), we have to listen to Govinda dream about the story he was told of Rak’s birth. Basically, his mother was a celibate seer who was raped, and the act implanted in her a monstrous presence that was never wrong. In fact, one of her predictions went so right that the man she was giving it to killed her, pretty much at term. So the dude who raped her cut the baby out — and it ended up being Rak.

Govinda is still watching him, in a cemetery, digging up a coffin. Govinda’s wife’s coffin. Who then comes to zombie-life and delivers their baby, also dead. Govinda realizes he’s being given a second chance with his god; at least according to this narrative, Hindus must be cremated rather than buried. (Wikipedia says this isn’t always true of every sect, but remember Pike didn’t have Wikipedia in 1994. Besides, even with a burial there are still preparation rites that we can probably assume Govinda didn’t follow, being too distraught to be a good Hindu.) So when his dead wife and son lie back down, he lights them on fire. Is this why he was supposed to be following Rak? He’s not risking it — he leaves the pyre and goes after him.

Now Julie shows up at Sara’s house, and she wants to go for a walk on the beach. Obviously Julie is still under Seedling, because she knows she doesn’t trust this lady but goes with her anyway. And she’s right to distrust, because Sara drags her into the ocean and starts the same transformation she did on Susan Darly.

And even though we know the Cold One is Sara, It still narrates in this way as It makes Its way back to the house. I’ll give this to Pike: he thoroughly commits to the voice. Who should It encounter on the road in front, though, but Rak, who asks to hear Its story. The Cold One tells how It has always had a consciousness beyond Its apparent age and that It followed the instructions of the Voice until it suddenly disappeared. Rak reveals that the Voice is none other than the ghost of the life of Sandra Morrow, causing the Cold One to relive her life up to the point of her death. Which is why It has ended up where It is. It wants to kill Rak and his weird Indian follower, but Rak won’t allow It to touch Govinda and can’t be manipulated by It anyway. This pisses It off — but hey, finally emotions!

It goes inside to find Lawrence Morrow staring at two bottles. One is whiskey, half empty. The other contains a moving fetus — the Cold One’s miscarriage from three years earlier, echoing the miscarriage that Sandra Morrow had three years before her death. And now that It remembers everything from both lives, It wants to make Dr. Morrow hurt the way he hurt Sandra. But because It has emotions and feelings for the first time, It wants to savor them, to drag things out and taunt and scare Larry. So he gets away, with the knowledge that his wife is somehow the comatose vegetable seven states away and the goal of stopping her, with maybe a plan? We don’t know yet.

But Rak and Govinda are still outside, because Govinda doesn’t know if his job is done yet. They walk down to the beach and find the lifeless body of Julie Moore in the surf. Govinda is ready to stop Rak from murdering an innocent, but all Rak does is watch Julie struggle to breathe. Govinda wants to help, but as he’s reaching in her mouth to clear the airway Julie bites off his finger. And now Rak steps in, calmly pushing Julie back to the sand and quieting her. He explains to Govinda that Julie carries a child who is the incarnation of the Hindu death goddess Kali, and that there’s nothing either of them can do and no rationale to what’s already happened. He takes off, and this time Govinda doesn’t follow, so he’s there when Julie wakes up and can take care of her instead.

Now Peter is stuck in the Denver airport on a layover and is thinking about everything he’s learned. He calls up the ex-girlfriend who bailed on him after her miscarriage, and learns that she was scared of the sensation, not just of miscarrying but also how cold and abnormal the life inside felt. So Peter’s vindicated in his jumping to conclusions, even though he hasn’t read the whole book like I did and couldn’t possibly know everything.

When he gets home, the first thing he does is goes to see Sara, and tells her everything he’s found out. She’s not to be deterred from her plan, though: fuck her brother and make a Cold Baby. If she can’t carry warm life to term and he can’t provide life for a ... I don’t know, “warmie”? Then maybe they should get it on together and allow their cold child to destroy humankind. Before she can torture him into banging her, though, Peter’s roommate shows up, having found the address and directions in the apartment and thinking it was a new place he had to deliver a newspaper. So Sara holds him under in the hot tub until Peter agrees to do what she wants, but it’s too late and the roommate is dead.

Meanwhile, Dr. Morray is flying the other direction, to see his wife for the first time in thirty years. And not just to see her: to cut her life support so she can die with whatever shred of dignity she has left, and so her undead reborn self will also die without ruining the world. Does he sign a medical order of withdrawal of life support? Hell no, he’s too rich and important for that. He sneaks in a scalpel and slices off the air tube, holding Penny Hampton hostage while he does it so nobody will stop him.

And now, with no breath in the warm lungs, the Cold One realizes that It is near Its end. That sentence is a cheat to make it sound more interesting: we’re still in Peter’s POV, as Sara smothers and fades. She tells him what Rak told her: that the first breath is a gift, and it can be given just as a life reaches its end to make more life. So Peter, who has never had anybody except this roommate, realizes that he has a responsibility to let him live. He blows his last breath into the roommate’s lungs and then dies beside his naked sister lover monster.

Epilogue, finally! Three years later, Govinda is back in LA for a meeting and he connects with Julie and her daughter at a playground. The kid sure is creepy and precocious, and doesn’t seem to be hot even though it’s a sweltering day. Maybe he shouldn’t have let Rak save Julie? Too late! To be continued! Only not, and it never was, and now Pike says it never will be!

Like ... what happened to the roommate? What happened to Dr. Morray and Penny Hampton? How is everybody reacting to the deaths of Peter Jacobs and Sara Morray? Has the city recovered from the monstrous killing spree? Does Govinda actually have a reason for being here beyond just telling us what Rak is doing? Where is the actual closure?

I really enjoyed reading The Cold One right up until that fourth section. It spent all of this time building people and monsters and showing how they were related to each other, and then it rushed to the end in less than a quarter of the length, with Peter’s death literally the last thing before the epilogue and no time to react or respond to it. It feels like Pike just had to get through the book to fulfill his contract requirement and didn’t have time to actually finish it, thus the tossed-in promise of The Cold One 2: Seedling at the end. I wish he would have just finished it at the time instead of kicking the can down the road to infinity.

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