The Guardian (Callista Ryan Series)

by Alexandra Weiss

  “How?” Callie asked.

  Emeric nodded subtly at Alex. “Try to enter Alex’s mind again,” he urged. “He’ll be focusing on the same memory. See if you can penetrate the walls of that thought, escape the memory and enter a new one.”

  She looked uncertainly towards Alex, who remained still on the other side of the room. “What do I do?” she asked.

  “Since fear seems to be your trigger, perhaps recall a fearsome experience. Recall when Alex approached you before, for instance.”

  Callie took a shaky breath, and nodded. She closed her eyes, conjuring up the image of Alex leaping towards her as before. Her stomach clenched, but not enough. She was afraid, but only in the way that people are afraid when looking backwards and knowing the outcome. It wasn’t real fear, just the memory of fear.

  She frowned. A fearful experience.

  A thought came to mind, but didn’t sit well with her. The only memory that she had on reserve which she knew would bring honest fear into her heart was not one she recalled readily. Not that she’d never remembered it before. She’d been having nightmares about it for the past four years.

  She swallowed and prepared herself. And then she allowed herself to be in the car again, facing the highway, the semi-truck crossing the yellow lines…and suddenly the car flipped over and she was yanked out of the window and landed on the cave floor.

  She felt a dizzying tug upon her body as she opened her eyes. Her palms were slick as she pushed to her feet. Her breath came in shallow pants. But she had done it.

  She laughed once, a short note of victory. “I did it,” she called out. She wiped her hands on her pajama bottoms, noticing for the first time that she was, in fact, still in her pajamas. She knew that would have been embarrassing if she’d cared about what the men back in reality thought of her.

  “Very good,” Emeric called to her. “Now can you find your way out?”

  Callie drew a steadying breath, not bothering to look around this time. She closed her eyes, trying to picture herself elsewhere. But all she could see was darkness. She felt the same cool breeze, heard the same birds, and tried again.

  Maybe, she thought, if she focused on the accident again, she could use fear to land in another memory. And so she tried to bring to mind the accident. The semi, the three jerky twists of the steering wheel, the world spinning out of orbit…. For some reason, these details, which had been etched into her mind for years, seemed blurry and out of place here. She couldn’t fully remember them. It felt like she were reaching for something through deep layers of sand, unable to really trace its outline.

  She sighed. “It’s not working,” she said. “I can’t get out by myself.”

  “Try again,” Emeric said patiently. “Try to erase this memory from your mind, disappear into the dark space. Find another.”

  Callie tilted her head back and cried out in frustration. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  And then, like before, a flash of light and a swirl of pictures, and Callie found herself being catapulted back into the present. She wobbled only slightly this time.

  She angrily tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Stop doing that,” she said. “It freaks me out.”

  “You don’t know your way out yet,” Emeric replied. “Alex has to force you out of his memory.”

  “He can do that?” Callie asked, looking at Alex. He didn’t seem to have moved. He wasn’t even looking at her now, choosing instead to gaze out the window in boredom.

  “Once he is aware of your presence there, yes,” Emeric said. “You are not yet strong enough to fight him from doing so. Eventually, you will be able to hang onto your position in one’s memory, even if they try to force you out.”

  “See, that, right there—I have no idea what you mean,” Callie said. “I know I’m from California, and I’m supposed to be down with this whole ‘feel the vibes’ stuff, but honestly, you are not making any sense.”

  Emeric smiled at her. “I think you have had enough for now,” he said, not unkindly.

  “Great,” she said, falling onto the couch while the world struggled to stop spinning.

  “Are you alright?” Emeric asked. A crease of worry knitted his brow.

  “Fine,” Callie replied. “That was just…weird.” Her gaze flicked to Alex.

  “Your color is paler than it should be,” Emeric noted with something akin to concern. She laughed, thinking about how easily he would have killed her yesterday, and that now he was worried because her color was off. “The Healer will be in soon to fix your breakfast. We will try again later in the day.”

  Callie was only listening with half of her mind now. The other half was completely focused on Alex. He had returned to watching her now, not seeming to mind that she was watching him right back. She squirmed under his scrutiny. The way he was looking at her reminded her of someone who expected something. It was almost an angry look, it was so harsh.

  “Alexander?” Emeric asked.

  Both Callie and Alex looked toward Emeric at the same time, surprised to find that he stood in wait in the doorway. Alex followed him over to the door, and Emeric looked back and forth between them with startled curiosity. He might have said something, had not Alex stepped from the ledge and disappeared into the wind. Emeric shook his head, as though dismissing a thought, and followed.

  The tiny woman whom Callie had met last night appeared in the room, as though on cue, and walked into the kitchen. Callie saw then that there was another door, the one from which the woman had just appeared. She wondered what was back there, but didn’t care quite enough to go explore.

  The woman began to open drawers in the kitchen, and Callie stood to see what she was doing. Knowing that the person who had poisoned her drink the night before would be fixing her breakfast made Callie nervous.

  She eased herself into one of the high-backed chairs and watched as the woman sliced into a large, purple fruit. She wielded the knife with precision and expertise, and Callie was reminded that Emeric had called her the Healer.

  “What is your name?” Callie asked her.

  At first, the woman didn’t respond, and Callie began to wonder if she really were deaf. But then, in a deeper timbre than Callie would have associated with such a petite figure, the woman replied, “Shay.”

  “Why did Emeric call you a Healer?” Callie asked, somewhat entranced by the skilled choreography the woman was performing with the knife. She seemed like a surgeon, slicing through the tough skin of the fruit with a mixture of ease and concentration. “Are you a doctor?”

  “I am a shaman,” Shay replied. The knife paused. “At least, I would have been.” She resumed her movements then, and continued, “I needed to leave my village before my training was completed.”

  “A shaman?” Callie asked, surprised.

  “I am an Aztec,” the woman said.

  “An Aztec?” Callie spluttered, wondering both why she could only seem to repeat what the woman said and if there were really any Aztecs left in existence.

  “I had been studying beneath the shaman in my village for ten years when my wings began to grow. I would have needed to study for another fifteen years at least before I could have become a village shaman.”

  “How old are you?” Callie asked dubiously. She seemed to be about twenty four, but if she had already studied medicine for ten years, she must have been older.

  Shay finished slicing the fruit and placed the juicy cubes into a small bowl. She handed the bowl to Callie and replied, in the same breath, “Five hundred and fourteen.”

  Callie balked. “Wh-what?” she cried. “Wait a second, wait. You’re…immortal? All of you?” she asked.

  Shay nodded, a strange expression on her face. “Did not Emeric explain the nature of our people?” she asked.

  “No!” Callie said, her voice pitched too high. “How is it even possible?”

  Shay circled the counter and sat next to Callie. She plucked a piece of fruit from the bowl a
nd pursed her lips. “It is a complicated set of evolutionary distinctions,” she explained, her tone somber and thoughtful. “Surely such an idea is not unfathomable. You have seen creatures live for hundreds of years before their demise. We simply live far longer than you do.”

  “Yeah, and never die,” Callie exclaimed.

  Shay nodded. “True,” she said, and popped the fruit into her mouth. Callie studied the woman before her. An ancient Aztec, right in her midst. She noticed again the tanned skin, the dark hair, the glasses, and marveled at the fact that this woman could have been mistaken for an ordinary person. Well, without the wings.

  “But how?” Callie asked.

  “We produce a much higher amount of telomerase than humans do,” she explained. “Our wings produce it in mass quantities, which allows a Guardian to evade any kind of prolonged injury. Once a Guardian grows his or her wings, all other forms of aging are halted.”

  “Wait,” Callie said, holding up a hand. “Telomerase?”

  Shay blinked at her. Then recognition dawned that Callie didn’t understand what this was. “It keeps people, humans and Guardians alike, from aging. Humans tend to stop producing it. Guardians don’t.”

  “So, basically, you just produce a bunch of the stuff, and you never die?” Callie asked, unable to make herself understand.

  Shay nodded. “Unfortunately, such excess also causes several side effects, not the least of which being the inability to reproduce. The body senses enough telomerase being produced in the wings, and effectively ceases to allow its production in other areas of the body, including in reproductive cells.”

  “You never had kids, you mean,” Callie said.

  “Oh, no, I’ve had children. I simply bore them before my wings grew in. I was married at a young age, and had managed to give birth three times before I evolved into my most recent state,” she said.

  Callie took a deep breath. This woman, who didn’t appear much older than herself, had given birth to three kids, and had survived for five hundred years.

  “Okay,” Callie said gamely. It all seemed absurd, so why not allow immortality to enter the mix?

  “Interestingly enough, we also have a high supply of melatonin, as well as an increased amount of naturally occurring antioxidants,” Shay said pensively.

  Callie shook her head. “Translation?” she asked.

  “We don’t have to worry about things such as cancer or heart disease, two things which tend to plague people as they get older. Basically, our age does nothing to hinder our health,” Shay explained.

  “Alright. I feel like I should tell you—I didn’t get most of that,” Callie admitted. Shay opened her mouth as though to explain once more, but Callie held up her hands in mock surrender. “I mean, I probably don’t want to understand most of it. Biology of the supernatural was never really a forte of mine.”

  “We are not supernatural,” Shay reasoned. “Supernaturalism pertains to that which does not exist in the observable universe. And, as you know, you are observing me at this very moment.”

  Callie watched her speak with a surprised sort of disbelief. “Do you always speak in dictionary quotations?” she asked.

  Shay ate another piece of fruit, oblivious to the potential insult. Callie couldn’t keep herself from grinning, and scooped up her own piece of fruit.

  “You remind me of my sister,” Callie said. She flashed back to a particular memory and felt a sense of lightness. “When we were younger, she was the smart one. I think she would have loved you.”

  “She is not smart anymore?” Shay asked.

  Callie felt her smile fade a little. “No,” she said. “I mean, that’s not it. She’s still smart, I guess. She just spends her days working in a Chili’s now for eight-fifty an hour.”

  She saw Maggie’s face again then, drifting towards the front of her mind. She shut her eyes, blocking out the image. She knew what she had to do to get back to Maggie. Thinking about her now, worrying about her when she couldn’t do anything, wasn’t going to help.

  Callie opened her eyes and forced herself to smile at Shay. “You do what you’ve got to do, I guess,” she said with a careless shrug.

  Shay wasn’t paying attention to Callie’s facial nuances. She was looking out the window, at the sky, appearing bored. Her posture reminded Callie of Alex, the way he had worn the exact same mask this morning.

  “What’s the deal with that tall guy? Alex, I think his name is? He never talks,” Callie said. “He looks sort of…generally pissed off.”

  Shay blinked at Callie, and she realized that the Aztec woman was probably unfamiliar with the term.

  “You know,” Callie said. “Angry.”

  “He’s one of Emeric’s most loyal protectors,” Shay replied.

  “What do you mean?” Callie asked.

  “He is the soldier Emeric chooses above all others when faced with a difficult mission.”

  “A mission,” Callie repeated, not sure what the woman meant. “You make him sound like James Bond.”

  Shay regarded her with a blank stare. Callie rolled her eyes, the culture clashes beginning to grow tiresome. “Never mind,” she said.

  “I don’t know what James Bond is,” Shay said. “Though I can tell you that Alexander is one of the oldest of our kind. And he is the most successful protector.”

  “Isn’t Emeric the most successful guy here?” Callie asked, surprised. “I mean, the way you all seem to worship him, it kind of seems like he is.”

  Shay shook her head. “You are confusing the terms,” she explained. “Emeric is merely a Guardian, he is not a protector. A Guardian is a member of our species. It is a word which can be used to refer to our general population, those of us who live here in the canopy. But there is another term used to describe a much more selective portion of the population. A protector is something of a soldier, acting on Emeric’s behalf. These men and women perform Emeric’s bidding, often sent out to observe and manipulate events in human societies. I suppose that the terminology complicates things.”

  “I suppose,” Callie replied with a laugh, though she understood it somewhat. “What do they do? The second kind of Guardian, I mean.”

  “No one knows, except for Emeric and the particular protector whom he has assigned to a case. Those are Emeric’s secrets; though I must say, he makes no secret of the fact that Alex is sent away the most. This leaves one to deduce that Alex is his most trusted protector.”

  “Well, sure,” Callie replied. “With such a sparkling personality, who wouldn’t trust him?”

  “No, I don’t believe it has anything to do with his personality,” Shay replied seriously.

  Callie watched Shay for a moment, waiting for some sign that she was joking. She couldn’t honestly have completely missed the sarcasm there. But Shay didn’t let on that she was joking, and so Callie shook her head with a disbelieving smile.

  “Okay,” Callie said. She pushed up from the chair she was sitting on. “I am now exiting crazy town.”

  “You are not in—“

  Callie held up a hand as she walked away, silencing the correction which she knew Shay was about to make. She walked towards the door, feeling a twinge in her lower back from sleeping on the couch. She needed to walk off the stiffness in her muscles. A walk would wake her up a little; her mind was still somewhat foggy from whatever Shay had put into her drink the night before.

  Maybe that fogginess was what caused Callie to forget about the dozens of feet between the threshold and the ground. Maybe it was simply due to the fact that she was used to stepping out of a door and landing on a solid surface. Either way, Callie stepped confidently out the door…

  …into the fifteen stories of blank air that lie beneath her.

  Chapter Five

  Enemy Lines

  Callie watched with horror as the ground soared up to meet her. She was spiraling downwards, her body spinning slowly even as it sank with rapid speed. She might have screamed, or been sick, or uttered a hundred diff
erent curses in the time that it took for her to plummet through those millions of miles of air. She wasn’t sure exactly.

  But she was sure of what happened next. Suddenly, something which felt like a thick metal bar jerked her rudely out of her decent. It winded her slightly as it yanked against her stomach, pulling her upwards and away from the mossy executioner that was the forest floor. She choked, struggling to catch her breath, as she floated through the sky.

  And then, in the next second, she saw the doorway from which she had just fallen. As she sucked desperately for breath, she managed to realize that the home she had been in for the past day or so was actually a cottage, nestled into a treetop. She had never seen anything like it; the tree trunk was made up of the same knotted cords that she’d seen from the cave yesterday, and then the branches opened on top like massive, thick petals of a flower. In that little hollow, secured on all sides by these branches, stood the sleepy cottage, built of dark wood and rope.

  She only had a moment to observe all of this, however, before she was soaring once again through the door of the cottage, and found Shay sitting at the counter, still picking through the cubed fruit as though nothing had happened.

  She could feel now that what she’d assumed to be a metal bar was actually a pair of arms, hugging her securely to a sturdy chest. She was dropped onto the couch, and landed with a small grunt. Looking up, she saw that it was Alex who had caught her, and he was now gazing down at her with an incredulous mixture of shock and amusement.

  She huffed, pushing to her feet once again. “Well, you would have fallen, too, if you were used to there being…oh, I don’t know, a floor when you stepped out of a door.”

  He didn’t reply, his face betraying nothing of his thoughts. Instead, he turned on his heel and walked towards the door, about to leave.

  “Wait!” Callie called, surprised to find that she didn’t want him to leave yet. He paused, though didn’t turn around. She approached him tentatively, not wanting to surprise him. “How did you do that?” she asked. “How did you see me falling?”

  “Emeric has him watching you,” Shay inserted promptly. Both Callie and Alex looked towards her. Shay turned in her chair to meet their gazes without a trace of doubt on her face. She shrugged her tiny shoulders awkwardly, and Callie suspected that Shay was mimicking her in an attempt to learn a new behavior. “It is just a guess,” she continued. “But if I were Emeric, I would want to protect my investment.”