The Guardian

by Elicia Hyder

  She sat up on her elbow, pressing it into the pillow beside my head, and I gave her the bottle. When she turned it up to her lips, I noticed the redness beneath the blood-stone collar had spread. I did a side crunch to get a better look.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I think it’s getting infected.” There were a few red streaks down her throat. “You need penicillin.”

  She grinned. “You gonna give me a shot?”

  “Hey, I did an IV successfully.”

  “How bad did you want to pass out?” She took another drink.

  “You have no room to talk, Miss Fear of Crickets.”

  She laughed, sputtering water onto my chest.

  “Seriously, why crickets? They’re harmless.”

  She put the water back on the nightstand. “Because one minute they’re over there chilling on a blade of grass, and the next, they’re in your mouth.”

  “Swallowed a lot of crickets, have you?”

  “It only took one,” she said, smiling down at me.

  My fingers slipped into her hair and behind her head. I pulled her lips back to mine. Then I broke the kiss on a moan. “We have to get out of this bed, or I won’t ever leave.”

  Lying beside me, Fury traced the thick lines of the black tattoo across my chest. “Anya is close. I can feel her.” She moved her leg across mine, then sat up, straddling my hips. Her long silky black hair cascaded over her shoulders. “We’re going to find her today.”

  I gripped her thighs as my eyes fell to her breasts. “This is not the way to make that happen.”

  Biting her lower lip, she rocked forward, making stars twinkle in the corners of my eyes. “But it really is perfect, isn’t it?”

  “Perfect,” I whispered, digging my fingertips in as I let my eyes roll back.

  Her warm hands touched my sides. “What will happen when we get back?”

  “Well, if you go back to John after this, I might have to kill him.” My hands slid up to her hips.

  “It’s been over with me and John for a while. Jett was the only reason we were still together, and now…” Her shoulders lifted.

  “Fury, I still can’t be around Jett.”

  “You can be if you get one of those stones.”

  “That’s a big if.”

  She sat back. Her face went slack. “Unless you plan on picking up your life with Sloan.”

  “God no. I’d never even try. She’s married to Nathan now, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. But, Fury, there’s still no guarantee I’ll get one of those stones. I don’t want to start making plans around such a huge maybe.”

  “Then how about we make plans on a regardless scenario? Even if we don’t get a stone, I’ll wait for you. Jett will come of age around—”

  “No. I won’t let you do that. It will be years before Jett’s old enough to not be affected by me. You can’t put your life on hold that long. I wouldn’t let Sloan do it, and I won’t let you either.”

  “Sloan had another option. I don’t want anyone else but you. I never have.”

  “Could’ve fooled me when you showed up that day with John.”

  “I wanted to make you jealous.”

  “It worked.” I looked up at the ceiling. “I was pissed.”

  “I couldn’t take it anymore. Watching you with her. So happy. So in love. I know it was my own fault—”

  “Yeah, it was.”

  She nodded. “That didn’t make it hurt any less.”

  “But you stayed with John for over a year.”

  “We found out I was pregnant.” She shrugged. “And for a long time, I really thought the baby was his.”

  “When did you know?”

  “Third trimester, I guess. There was just too much power for the baby to be human. But by then, John was so excited, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. I kept putting it off.” Her face fell. “And, selfishly, I didn’t want to do it alone.”

  “You owe him an apology.”

  “I know I do. I’ll talk to him when we get home.”

  “Whatever happens, I don’t want you to get back together with him.”

  “I won’t be with anyone but you.”

  I pulled on her hips. “Allison, I’m serious. You can’t wait for me. Make a life with someone else, just not John.”

  “Aside from the obvious, what do you have against John?”

  “A man who loves you won’t grab you the way he did.”

  “I kind of deserved it.”

  “You never deserve a man putting his hands on you in anger. I meant what I told him. I’ll kill him if he ever does it again.”

  She rocked forward again, making me completely forget what I was saying. I moaned as her hands slid up my chest. Then she bent and kissed me, her knees tightening against my sides. I pushed my hips up into her as my hands slid over her ass.

  There was another knock at the door, louder this time. “Warren, we have a problem out here.” It was Reuel.

  With a heavy sigh, my whole body deflated. A problem? “Coming!” I patted the side of Fury’s thigh. “We’d better get up before he breaks down the door.”

  Leaning onto her right knee, she dismounted and sat on the edge of the bed. The black script across her ribcage snagged my attention again. I graced my fingers across it, and she flinched away from me with a laugh.

  “Ticklish?” I asked, surprised.

  “A little.”

  “You never had a tattoo before. What does it say?”

  She raised her arm so I could read the words, You don’t need wings to fly.

  “I like it. What’s it mean?”

  “I got it when Anya was taken. It was one of the last things she said to me before Abaddon showed up that day.”

  “Why?”

  She took a deep breath. “It was a dark time for me. After everything that had happened with you, I was feeling pretty shitty about myself.”

  “You had a self-confidence crisis?” I asked in disbelief.

  “It wasn’t the first time. Anya was the only one who ever noticed. She always knew it was hard for me that she was born an angel while I was born human, and we were both stuck in this world where neither of us quite belonged.

  “The day Abaddon took her, she was giving me a pep talk. And that’s what she said. You don’t need wings to fly.”

  I rubbed her bare back. “I love it.”

  Then she stood as I desperately tried to think of anything else besides how good it felt to be with her. The sight of her made it impossible. “God, you’re beautiful.”

  She smiled over her shoulder before walking to the door to pick up my shirt she’d discarded the night before. I sat up, and she tossed me my underwear and pants. It was a struggle to get them on, but I finished stuffing myself into them just as she opened the door.

  Reuel was standing just outside. His worried look was alarming. Still shirtless, I followed Fury out the door. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  Outside, the stench of rotten eggs filled my nose. The sky was gone, replaced with an eerie orange light I’d mistaken for the sun.

  “Go look outside the barriers.” Reuel pointed off the porch.

  Barefoot, I descended the stairs with Reuel and Fury right behind me. I walked around the concrete walls that protected the trailers and gasped.

  Everything—the whole base—was gone.

  Our trailers, along with the Humvee sitting right outside, were now a lone fort at the top of a mountain. Beneath us, the Bad Lands were exposed, a smoky wasteland of knotty dead trees and massive stones…God, I hoped they weren’t made of osmium.

  Fury walked past me to the edge. “What the hell?”

  Those words had never been so literal before.

  I grasped the back of my shirt she was wearing. “You’re making me nervous.” It was a long way down.

  “Ket Nhila,” Reuel said.

  “Is that the tower?” Fury asked, a surge of hope in her voice.

  In the distance, the wasteland ended in
cliffs that dropped into a fiery magenta lake. A large stone bridge arched over to an island with a dark city surrounding a fortress. The city was small, but even from our great distance, I could see dim lights on the buildings. In its center was a tower that soared into the hazy orange atmosphere.

  “I think so.”

  “Anya,” she whispered.

  I pulled her against me and kissed the side of her head.

  “But I don’t understand,” Fury said. “What happened to Baghdad?”

  Reuel turned toward us and awkwardly lifted an eyebrow. “Sounded to me like you conquered your fear last night.”

  I bit down on the insides of my mouth to pin down a smile, and Fury covered her face with her hand.

  He shook his big head as he looked toward the tower. “I waited in the vehicle for a while, but when I finally came back here, everything was still as we’d left it last night.”

  “So when did all this happen?” Fury asked.

  “When you fell asleep,” I answered.

  Reuel nodded. “That’s what I thought too.”

  I looked back at the trailers, the only things left intact. “I’m glad it didn’t take the bed out from under us.”

  “Me too. But I suggest we don’t stick around long. Now that it’s so obvious that it isn’t real, I don’t trust it,” Reuel said.

  “Yeah. Let’s get changed and pack up our gear.” My head jerked upright. “Shit.” I took the steps two at a time.

  “What’s the matter?” Fury asked, coming after me.

  I threw open the door to Burch’s trailer, stretching my wings for all the light I could get. Fury’s rucksack was on the floor. I picked it up and dumped its contents on the bed. Then I began to frantically search the floor.

  Fury was behind me. “You’re freaking me out. What is it?”

  I dragged my fingers through my hair, nearly tearing my hair from my scalp. “The medical kit. I left it at the hospital.” I slowly turned toward her and Reuel now standing in the doorway. “The penicillin is in the bag.”

  Fury looked slightly relieved. “It’s OK. We’ll find Anya and get back home. Then I can have the burns treated properly. I’ll even go to a burn center. It will be fine.”

  “Let me see.” Reuel turned her around and inspected her neck. When she tilted her chin up for him, she winced. Then he locked eyes with me. “We should hurry.” He saw it too. The redness, the swelling, the oozing flesh around the collar.

  Ten minutes later, we were all dressed and had packed as much as we could into the two rucksacks I’d found. Reuel and I carried them out of the trailers. I handed Fury one of the remaining bottles of water. “Keep sipping on this as much as possible.”

  She nodded and fell in line between me and Reuel as we walked off the porch steps and around the barrier. Even the Humvee was now gone.

  I stopped walking and clotheslined Fury as she tried to pass me.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  I stared down at the base of the mountain. “Demons.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Well, well, well. Boys, I think we’ve caught ourselves an Archangel.” The demon, a giant red-headed guardian like Reuel, couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from me as we descended the mountain. He carried a sword like mine, but bigger, on his hip. And around his neck was a purple sanctonite stone.

  Our wings still wouldn’t work, controlled by some kind of magic. There were six angels waiting for us: a messenger, four guardians, and an Angel of Ministry.

  “Hello, Reuel,” the guardian with the red hair said.

  “Etred.” Reuel’s direct glare was dangerous.

  The demon Etred spotted Fury. “Who do we have here?”

  Reuel moved Fury behind him. I stayed by her side.

  “We don’t want to fight,” Reuel said as we reached the bottom.

  Etred laughed. “Then you have come to the wrong place, my old friend. Unless you’ve come to join the dark side.”

  One of the smaller demons, the messenger, walked in a wide circle around us.

  The Angel of Ministry, a rare one in human form, was a hunched-back white woman. She inched toward Fury. “This one is human.” She sniffed the air. “And she is dying.”

  The word made my stomach turn. I wasn’t helping keep her alive. The events of our previous night might have been her death sentence.

  One of the other guardians crouched down. She was also a white woman but far less like Old Mother Hubbard than the Angel of the Ministry. The guardian sprang into the air and landed with a powerful thud between Fury and Reuel. “I know this one,” she hissed, grabbing Fury’s wrist, the one with the key.

  Reuel spun and grabbed the demon by her curly black hair. He snapped her arm that was holding Fury, then whipped her over his head and slammed her into the dry cracked dirt, creating a massive crater. The whole ground shook beneath our feet.

  The other demons laughed and clapped their hands. “Still got it, I see,” Etred said.

  Reuel was panting, snarling through clenched teeth.

  The messenger, who I was carefully watching creep behind us, darted suddenly back to his group. He said something in Etred’s ear, then cowered behind him. I felt the weight of my sword at my back and realized he’d seen it.

  He was also afraid of it.

  “Relax, Reuel.” Etred put his hand on his own sword. “We don’t want to fight either if we can help it, but we have to take you back to the Tower.”

  “We need to go there anyway,” Fury whispered.

  I pulled the sword from its scabbard, and all eyes followed the blade. “Lead the way.”

  “I don’t feel so good.” Fury grabbed onto my arm as we neared the wasteland’s cliffs.

  Reuel slowed to walk beside us.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “My eyes. They won’t stop watering. Now they’re starting to burn.”

  “Look at me.” When she did, I saw her eyes were bloodshot and wet. “Try to keep them closed. Reuel, you take her.”

  He held her hand and wrapped his arm around her waist. Knowing my presence wasn’t helping, I hung back to give them as much space as possible.

  The demons started down a stone staircase at the edge of the cliff. The bridge was about fifty feet down. The lake beneath it was filled with what looked like fiery molten lava, churning and sloshing against the cliffs. It had a purple glow, and it smelled like rotten eggs.

  This was what Hell was supposed to look like.

  As we neared the bridge, I heard a faint haunting sound. The hiss and crackle of deadly osmium. I double-stepped to catch up with Fury and Reuel, and when I did, I pulled the front of Fury’s tank top up over her nose.

  Unfortunately, she was panting from the walk. She barely opened her eyes. “Moloch…he said…there wasn’t any more…osmium inside.”

  “Moloch lied. Surprise, surprise. Keep your eyes closed and your breathing shallow.”

  The bridge had no walls or handrails, but it was wide enough for four or five of us to walk side-by-side. It was at least a quarter-mile across to the city. I prayed Fury could make it that far.

  In 2005, with a stroke of shitty luck—surprise, surprise—I wound up in New Orleans working body recovery after Hurricane Katrina. The French Quarter was closed. Debris and water sloshed through Bourbon Street. And looters smashed windows and set shit on fire.

  Still, a handful of bars were running on weak generators and pumping out screwdrivers served in paper cups.

  That was the city at the base of Hell’s fortress. Without all the water. And in this wicked city, my friends and I were freaks, drawing curious stares from the demons—and human souls—who loitered along the streets.

  Whispers followed us as we passed.

  “The Archangel of Death.”

  “Reuel.”

  “Azrael.”

  And several derogatory remarks flew by about Fury. Miraculously, the three of us didn’t retaliate. Not that Fury could have. The coughing had begun whil
e we were still on the bridge, and now, her wheezing was so loud I could hear her lungs twenty paces behind her.

  Fortunately, the farther we got away from the bridge, and the higher we climbed up the city hill, all signs of osmium began to disappear.

  But I feared it was too late.

  The soul of a human male flung himself at my feet. “Kill me,” he begged, grasping for my legs. “Please, dear God, kill me!”

  A symbol glittered in the center of his chest. It was a roman cross with two S’s mirroring each other. It was my mark. The symbol of the Archangel of Death. But the man’s face was unknown to me, meaning he’d been here so long my father was the one to kill him.

  I shook him free from my leg and stepped over him, much to the amusement of the voyeurs of death watching nearby.

  Etred and his demons started up a steep stone staircase toward the palace. Purple light emanated from the entrance hall at the top. There was another sanctonite stone inside. I could feel it.

  Fury stumbled on the stairs, and Reuel caught her around the waist. “Are you OK?” I asked, catching up with them.

  She nodded, but her face looked clammy and gray. We’d been walking for hours, and it was clear, the exertion was taking its toll.

  I put the back of my hand against her cheek. She was burning up. “Drink some water.” Pulling a bottle from the side pocket on my rucksack, I untwisted the cap and handed it to her. Her shaky hands held it to her lips, dribbling water down her chin.

  So far, the demons hadn’t confiscated anything from us. They also hadn’t spoken again, at least not since Reuel’s refusal to answer Etred’s questions about why we were in Nulterra.

  I glanced back to the wasteland we’d trekked through. The trailers were gone, and the entire mountaintop had vanished. Without the illusions, I could see a faint purple light over the horizon.

  The gate.

  It was comforting to know at least its general direction. I searched the land for anything else I could use to map our surroundings. A tall spire of one of the buildings in the city seemed to point right at it from this vantage point. I made a mental note of it.

  “Are you coming, Archangel?” Etred called down. The group had reached the top landing without me.