Ground Zero

Ground Zero - Blue-Eyed Bomb Book Five © 2023 Amber Lynn Natusch All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-959010-02-9 Ground Zero is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Published by Amber Lynn Natusch Cover by Regina Wamba of Mae I Design Ebook Formatting by BookMojo Editing by Kristy Bronner http://amberlynnnatusch.com Table of Contents Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Epilogue About the Author More by Amber Lynn Natusch Prologue Death… The empty hollow of its darkness echoed through my mind, casting it in a curtain of black that I could not escape. It strangled my thoughts—my memories—choking them out so easily that I struggled to remember anything. I should have been terrified, but I wasn’t. Terror was a feeling I had no room for as I stood under the veil of death. Only despair. I’d felt this emptiness once before—when I’d destroyed a piece of the world that would never be restored. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if I had again. Flashes of what I’d done in my past soon mixed with my fractured memories of the present, but they snuffed out before the images became clear. All I could see was the smoke I now stood amid—smoke and fire and blood. All I heard were echoes of the voices screaming my name. “Phira, don’t…Phira, stop!” But I hadn’t listened to them. I had not stopped. And as I looked down at my bloodstained hands, the fog lifted from my mind, bringing clarity and realization along with it. Realization of what had just happened. Clarity on the source of the red spatter painting my clothes. My face. My hair. “What have I done?” I whispered into the darkness that threatened to consume me. But the darkness never answered. Chapter One Panic like I’d never felt coursed through me, paralyzing me. I stared at the empty alley where Gabe and his army of resurrected werewolves had just been. Where they’d surrounded the warehouse as they’d closed in on me. Where TS had landed just before they’d all disappeared in a blink, thanks to the Tome of Creations and its time-jumping minion, Zaman. Now they were gone. And they’d taken TS with them. Realization crashed into me, and I let loose a scream that could have shattered glass. I punched the brick wall hard, creating a dust cloud around me. As it cleared, I watched my uncles and brothers come racing out of the warehouse, ready to come to my aid. But there was nothing to aid. The emptiness of the alley and the truth its shadows held consumed me. TS had been taken by the being who wanted to tear me apart from the inside out. Killing the one I loved most would do just that, and Gabe damn well knew it. Helpless tears streamed down my face as Nico grabbed me by my shoulders and leveled his dark stare on mine. “Phira,” he said, squeezing me hard, “what happened?” When I didn’t respond, he did a quick visual sweep of the area, then turned back to me. “Where is TS?” There it was, the million-dollar question I couldn’t fucking answer. “Sapphira,” Alek called, his voice softer and gentler than our eldest triplet sibling. But his serene nature was a lie, and I could feel it. He was just as worried as Nico—maybe more. “Phira… you must tell us what’s going on.” My weary gaze drifted beyond him to see the Fates, my father, and Muses standing shoulder to shoulder, a warrior wall of concern. I forced my feet to move, though they protested, and pushed past my brothers until I reached the one I needed most. Muses—my target—stood on the far right of the group, his expression tight. It only worsened the closer I got, as his suspicion grew. By the time I reached him, he’d subtly shifted into a fighting stance, as though I’d come to attack him. But all of that fell away, leaving shock in its wake, when I reached down to take his hands and lifted them to my face. The warmth of his palms on my cheeks cut through my wind-kissed skin. “I can’t…” I struggled to even get those words out. “Do it for me, Muses… please.” For a split second, I swore I saw pity flash in his ice-blue eyes. Then power rushed through our connection, and I felt him swimming around my skull, probing my mind, just as I’d quietly demanded. “Tell us what happened tonight, before we came outside.” The press of his magic loosened my tongue with ease, and I rambled out all that had occurred in that brief time—including what had happened before Gabe showed up. How TS had finally kissed me. How he’d told me he loved me just before he’d jumped off the roof to face a mob of undead werewolves and the maniac who’d brought them back—to torment me. To kill me. When I finished rehashing everything, Muses’ hands lingered on my cheek for a second longer than necessary. His thumb brushed away a stray tear before he let go; then his normal abrasive personality slid back into place, leaving no trace of the tenderness he’d just shown in its wake. But I felt the remnants of it, combined with his confusion and uncertainty, lingering in the air around us. “Call Pierson,” my father told Ferris. “He may know how to help with this.” Then