Eternal Pleasure Read Online Free Page A

murmur silenced the table. No one moved; no one breathed .
    Ty’s imagination couldn’t begin to wrap itself around what it would mean if Fin ever lost control. Death and destruction like the earth had never known. He’d seen it happen once . The thought took root and refused to budge. His memory was wrong, though. He’d never seen Fin before tonight. Then what…?
    Fin fixed him with an unblinking stare. “Forget it.” Fin never raised his voice. He didn’t have to.
    Ty frowned as the thought faded. It hadn’t made any sense anyway.
    “We need to know what we’re facing.” The guy in the suit sitting next to Ty spoke up for the first time.
    “Once I woke you, I had to decide what to tell you first. I chose to fill you in on the nitty-gritty day-to-day stuff.” Fin studied all of them. “I thought I’d have time to explain everything else to you tonight. But it’s not going to happen. You’d tear each other apart long before I finished. I underestimated what being close to me would do to you.” He pushed his chair away from the table, rose, and strode to the wall of windows. Standing, he was about six eight.
    Ty and the others joined him. Far below, the lights of Houston looked like some giant connect-the-dots picture.From Fin’s expression, Ty figured he wouldn’t like what the finished shape revealed. Fin’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s your jungle down there, all the dark alleys and deserted streets. The hunting will be good.”
    “And who’ll be hunting us? ” Someone behind Ty voiced the question they all wanted to ask.
    “The same beings that wiped us out sixty-five million years ago. Nine powerful immortals plus their leader, the granddaddy of them all.” Fin’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes gleamed cold and hard.
    “Why?” the voice behind Ty asked for all of them.
    “Because no one has ever said no to them. Until now. They’ve worked the absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely truth since the beginning of time. They foment destruction and chaos. It puts them in their happy place.” He curled his lips back from his teeth. “I’d like to put them in their dead place.”
    “How do they make it happen?” Ty figured what had worked millions of years ago might not work now.
    “They only target the dominant life form of the planet. They encourage evil, and if Earth isn’t harboring any intelligent evil at the time, they work up a few cataclysms. Sixty-five million years ago, it was an asteroid strike.”
    “Why wait millions of years if they get such a kick out of it?” Ty raked his fingers through his hair. If he didn’t get action soon, he’d explode.
    “They don’t have a choice. Earth’s life is measured in time periods. At the end of each period, a cosmic door opens and the bastards can return for a short time until the new period begins. They’re here now. And this time they plan to take out the whole human race.”
    No one spoke, but rage and the need to kill was a living, breathing presence in the room.
    “We weren’t strong enough to fight them last time. But now?” Fin smiled. Not a nice smile. “Now is different.”
    “How soon?” Utah’s blue eyes blazed with his desire to hunt.
    Fin’s gaze grew distant. “The present time period ends on December twenty-first, 2012, at exactly eleven eleven. Winter solstice. Then the cosmic clock resets to zero, and time begins again. What we do between now and that moment will decide whether humanity still walks the earth when the new period begins.” His expression turned savage. “And I don’t know about you, but I have a vested interest in the human race. There won’t be another Great Dying.”
    Ty didn’t question how Fin knew stuff like this; he just did. “Why will this time be different?”
    “We’re the Eleven. Numbers have power, and eleven is a master number. It defines who we are. When the clock hits eleven eleven on that December twenty-first, we’ll be at our strongest. Humans with