Entropy (The Countenance Trilogy 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

We have to go and free my mom and Lacey from the tunnels.” She starts to pull me up, and I hold her back.
    “Your mom and Lacey?” I ask, stunned as shit. I love little Lacey as if she were my own kid sister. I can’t imagine either one of them down there.
    “Coop’s Mom, too, and Casper. That’s where she went when she disappeared, but you probably already know that.” Laken looks down a moment as if I’ve intentionally been keeping these things from her.
    “Casper?” Flynn’s ditz of a sister who everyone thinks ran off to Texas? “I swear on all that is holy, I did not know that.” My heart sinks because I have a feeling I know what she’s about to ask next, and it’s impossible for me to pull off.
    “Let’s get the hell down there, Wes. We can free them tonight, and this entire nightmare will be over.” There’s so much hope in her eyes, I’m afraid to crush it.
    “We can do that, Laken,” I assure, pulling her in close, afraid that if I loosen my grip she’ll float away like a butterfly. “But we can’t go in haste, or we’ll get both ourselves and the people we want to save, killed.” In the most barbaric fashion, but I leave that part out. The Counts are beasts. I should know—I am one. “Let me devise a way. We need an intricate plan. I can get us in, but our every move is watched. They’ll let us get so far, and we might even believe we’re about to pull it off, but they’ll drop the guillotine over our necks before we ever get close to being free. The Tenebrous Woods are nothing to mess with—neither are the Counts.”
    “ Wes .” Laken buries her face in my neck a moment, and I drink down the sensation of her skin heating mine. I missed this on a deeper level, all these months, and now I know why. She pulls back and inhales sharply. “I’m not giving up. It’s not hopeless. I swear to you, even if it kills me, I’m getting my family the hell out of there. They’ve got, Lacey .” She says her sister’s name as a last minute appeal.
    Lacey’s tiny face stains my heart, and my gut pinches with grief.
    “I promise you, Laken, we will bring her home. I’ll talk to Edinger and make sure your family walks.” Not so sure about Coop’s mother, though, or Casper. I’m already pushing it. It goes strictly against Count code, and something tells me this is going to put my balls on the line as it is.
    She doesn’t bother to hide her disappointment. “So it’s me and you against the Counts, right?” Her eyes widen like flares, alive with anger, a riot in each one for the very beings we’ve become—that we’ve always been.
    “We’ll get them out. I’m on your side, I swear it.”
    Laken swallows hard. Her discomfort rises exponentially and heats the tiny shelter we’re in until it feels like a sauna.
    How do I tell her that I just had the world thrust onto my shoulders? That there are people I need to shake the shit out of to make me fully understand what exactly is happening here. That I’m still not sure if this is all some mind fuck designed by the Counts and that Cider Plains and all these new memories aren’t just some manufactured element to throw me off—to punish me for wanting to believe Laken on some level.
    There are a lot of questions to ask—questions building like an avalanche, but this isn’t the time or place to roll any of that crap around. It’s Laken and me on a black-sand beach with no sign of Flanders in the vicinity, and so I do the only thing I want to. I lean in and land my lips softly over hers, and Laken doesn’t resist.
    A heated moan escapes her throat. My name echoes in her mind like a boomerang, like a seaside echo—like a memory.
    I’m more in love with Laken tonight than I’ve ever been before. This is every good feeling, every lusty appeal I’ve ever felt for her rolled into one. I wish the sun would never come up—that tonight would last forever.
    My hands ride up and down her back, wild and free as her fingers float inside