As Alex flew them towards the stars, Callie leaned her head against his solid shoulder, listening to his heartbeat. In the silence of the evening, the forest closed in around them, wrapping them in an ivy cocoon. She could barely remember the unhappiness of the past two days as he held her. She couldn’t be upset with him now if she tried. It was the same, indescribable feeling of being a part of him. They were connected; no amount of discomfort or clumsiness could break that.
When they landed on Shay’s doorstep, Callie took a moment to process what her eyes were seeing. Strewn across the cottage’s every surface were metallic, pointed, clinical instruments, gleaming with polish and settled into various crevices. The couch was completely covered with thick, age-softened journals.
Elsewhere, something was smoking, emitting a foul smell that must have been a mix between newly-cut grass and whiskey. Callie gagged and the scent. She waved a hand in front of her face as she stepped into the living room.
“Shay?” she called. She felt Alex move with her.
She circled the counter and found Shay sitting on the floor, cross-legged, one pen behind her ear and one in her hand, a spiral notebook with jagged scribbles marring its face open on her lap. Above her, a pot boiled with greenish-brown liquid.
“Purple,” Shay mumbled to herself now, violently scratching out certain letters. “The petunia turned white, which means if we manufacture a cell that resembles—“
“Alex?” Callie whispered, afraid to talk too loudly now that Shay had gone insane.
“—the mutation and insert it into the bloodstream….”
Alex sighed. He took Callie’s hand in his own, making Callie’s heart stutter. He tugged her towards the door, and only once they were out of ear-shot did he say, “The last time I saw her like this, she was coming up with the cure to smallpox.”
He nodded his head at the door, and opened his arms to Callie. Callie crawled into them without question, without second thought.
“Come on,” he said as she settled in again.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You’ll stay at my place tonight,” he answered. At that, her stuttering heart went into over-drive, beating so loudly and thickly that she was sure he could hear it.
He had said those words with such ease, but the thought of sleeping at his cottage, mere feet away from him, turned up the temperature of Callie’s bloodstream and made her stomach twist into a tight knot.
And yet, as they flew over the treetops, the stars shimmering like stray diamonds in the night sky, a perfect sense of peace overwhelmed her. There was magic in this night. The atmosphere was brimming with promise. Possibilities clung to every breath that Callie drew.
She nestled her cheek into Alex’s neck, her eyelids growing heavy despite her excitement. The tranquility that enveloped her had everything to do with the way his arms curved gingerly under her knees, around her back. His hands cradled her carefully, the feel of his skin against hers at once exhilarating and soothing. She tightened her arms around his neck, hugging herself more closely to him. Her fingers fell across the pucker on his back, and she blindly traced the scar that she knew to be there.
She wondered if he knew that he made her feel this way, like there was exactly enough time left for them. Like happiness was a probability, not an exception. She couldn’t remember ever feeling that way before she’d known him. For years, she had assumed that happiness was behind her. But now, she felt like her life might be about to begin. Like she’d only had a taste of the good things to come.
Another yawn consumed her. He smiled dotingly, meeting her with his glittering brown eyes, so full of warmth that her breath caught in her throat. “Sleep,” he whispered, his mouth close to her ear. “I’ve got you.”
She took another deep breath of the sultry air, enchanted by the whole night. And then she closed her eyes, allowing herself to feel heavy in his arms as she sank into sleep, the vision of stars dancing overhead at play on the backs of her eyelids.
The last thing she thought about as they soared through the sky was how safe she felt, how at home she was all these hundreds of miles away from California. How at home she was as he drew her snug against his heart.
Chapter Eighteen
Revelations
Callie awoke to pillows of white fluff. She was startled to find that she was practically swimming in the cream colored fabric. It took a moment to gather her bearings. She couldn’t, at first, make sense of the scene.
Sitting up, she saw that the white down was a large, luxurious duvet cover. It wrapped her in cushiony warmth, stretching out to cover the huge bed. Coral sunlight rushed in through the windows, reflecting off of the mirror in the corner and playing in prism-filtered diamonds on the bed.
Callie looked around the room as the light warmed her skin. It was a spacious collage of cream-colored furniture and soft brown accents. The walls were painted a gentle, buttery yellow which was especially vibrant in the morning light. The tiki headboard released a rich, earthy scent. The bed bore at least six plump pillows, each white and full of plush feathers. There was a cherry wood armoire settled against the far wall, and a mahogany bureau to the right of it. Callie pushed back the duvet and walked over to the desk.
On top of the chocolate-hued wood sat a thick novel. When Callie was close enough, she picked the book up and saw that it was an aged copy of Les Miserables. She traced a finger over the indented lettering of Hugo’s name, and carefully flipped through the withering pages. Someone had folded down the corner of one page, she saw, and she began to read.
Her eyes snagged on a few lines which she remembered her mother reading to her as a child. She realized as she read them that Alex must have been the one to mark the page. She had no real reason for thinking so, no proof to validate her theory. But at the same time, she knew that it had been because those moments of her childhood that he had marked the page.
“Cosette, in her seclusion, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, was slowly bringing these two beings near each other. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.”
Callie smiled to herself as she read the familiar words. Les Miserables had been her mother’s favorite book, and she remembered her mother reading it to her when she’d been too young to understand it. Only now, looking back on all of those bedtime stories of villainous police and pure-hearted churchmen, did Callie realize her mother’s strategy; reading that book had been the only certain method to make Callie fall asleep quickly.
She returned the book to its place and glanced again about the room. Similar to the rest of the cottage, there were no photos here. There was a print that she vaguely recognized hanging above the bureau; it was a famous painting of Cupid as he happened upon a sleeping Psyche. But there was nothing personal. It was functional, and that was all.
She sighed, unsure why this was. But she didn’t dwell on it; now that she realized that she was in Alex’s cottage, and that he must be around somewhere, excitement flooded through her and she went in search of him.
He wasn’t very hard to find. As soon as Callie had tiptoed through the bedroom door, she saw him on the black suede couch, his whole body slack in sleep. She froze, not wanting to wake him, and stood in the doorway as she watched him sleep. It was an odd thing, seeing a Guardian sleep. The only other time she’d seen it was in Shay’s house, when Emeric and Alex had been with her after their trip to the island. But now, as she watched him sleep peacefully, she was struck by how unintimidating he looked. His wings were folded behind his back and cushioned his body against the sofa pillows. One arm was tucked beneath his head, while the other rested in front of his chest. His face, usually alert and guarded, was relaxed, his harsh features gentled by slumber.
She silently padded towards him, and knelt beside the couch. As she watched his chest rise and fall rhythmically, s
he felt a wave of tenderness. She tucked a loose strand of sandy hair behind his ear, noting the way his eyelids flickered as she did so. Callie wondered idly what he was dreaming about; whatever it was, it must have been beautiful. She had never seen him so calm.
Stamping down a twinge of guilt over what she was about to do, she closed her eyes and rested a hand on his forearm, focusing on getting inside of his mind. It took a few tries, a few long seconds, before she was able to penetrate his thoughts.
When she opened her eyes, she was standing on the black shingles of a nondescript rooftop, unaware of where she was. Alex stood to her right, his head turned away from her. She saw that he was intently watching something in the distance, and followed his gaze.
There, about three blocks away, was Callie’s high school. The shriek of a mid-afternoon bell gave way to a tidal wave of students, all flowing from the wide double doors of Tamalpais High in pregnant bursts of bodies. Callie watched as Alex narrowed his eyes, searching the crowd as he crouched low into the roof. Even though she knew that she, unlike Alex, was invisible to the passers-by below, she sunk into a seated position beside him.
She knew what he was looking for; and, in the next moment, her suspicion was confirmed. As the grassy lawn in front of the school was leached of the students, each having sprinted to their homes by now, a younger version of Callie walked slowly through the doors. Alex’s face settled into a less intense version of his former scowl, his eyes glued to the girl on the ground as she made her way down the blocks without hurry.
Callie watched this girl pace timidly down the sidewalk. She knew that she must have been fifteen here, because her hair had been cropped all the way to her shoulders. It was an odd feeling, watching herself. She had never tried to garner anyone’s attention in high school. She had never wanted to define herself, to stick herself into any particular category. Instead, she had always tried to blend in, go unnoticed. The funny thing was, for all those years, she had honestly thought that she’d been successful. She could never have imagined that someone would follow her with his eyes as loyally as Alex did now.
The present-day version of Callie didn’t understand why he seemed so absorbed by the trivial task of walking home. His attention was honed in on the girl below with sharp intensity. When his eyes weren’t glued to her every movement, they were darting to each side, scanning the street for something.
When the younger Callie neared the street corner that she turned at, Alex stood up, and began to leap from roof to roof, his wings elongating his graceful bounds so that he never faltered. She couldn’t see herself anymore, but she watched as Alex strode across the rooftops, never for a moment tearing his focus from the girl on the sidewalk.
Callie didn’t feel like attempting to follow him. She knew how this day would play out. It would proceed in the same way that every other day had, with her doing absolutely nothing worth such devoted attention. The most exciting performance might be when she began her geometry homework.
So, instead of hanging about these lifeless parts, she took a deep breath, and pictured herself in that black hallway which divided Alex’s thoughts. Doing so this time took much more effort than it had before; he was subconsciously determined to stay in this moment.
But she didn’t let the picture of that hallway slip from her mind. She grappled at the edges of this memory, imagining the borders of it like those of a picture. When she had framed it in one place, she exhaled harshly and kicked out of it, and found herself suddenly in that dark hallway once again.
She sighed in relief, the weight of the previous memory released from her shoulders.
Skimming the pinpricks of light, each flickering like a silent movie to either side, Callie watched the flashing pictures. The images were cracked and faded now, each zoomed in to a small focal point, so that Callie couldn’t clearly see any of them. But when she began to make out the features of certain pictures, she gasped.
They were of her. All of these memories, the barest traces of light, were pictures of her. She began to float backwards in time, watching as she grew younger in those silently moving photos. One on her left had taken place last night; she saw her slumbering face as Alex laid her upon his bed, her head sinking into the deep pillows. Further down, another captured her image as she was battered and bloodied from her day on the island. She winced away from that one. It was shaded too darkly; she could hardly make out the picture. As she soared back through the portraits of herself, some burning brightly while others hid in subtle shadows, and knew that she had passed the seventeen-year mark when her face disappeared altogether.
She couldn’t make sense of the other things she saw then. Bearded men laughing and cursing, canons shooting forth explosions, masses of people huddled around each other. The first image that Callie saw of Adeline, one in which the red-haired beauty had tilted her chin back in laughter, stung her a little. But not as much as the following dozens of images of Adeline did. Callie sped her pace through this portion.
After a long while, Callie felt the hallway drawing to a close. She had passed millions of pictures, hoping to arrive here. This was the beginning of all of it. Callie turned to either side and saw images of Alex, his handsome face younger, that of a small boy. These memories had grown dull with age; they bore the cracks and spots of any old photograph.
But one hung more ominously than the rest in that hall. The picture was so dark that it was almost black. Callie wondered what could have caused such bitterness; what memory was this that haunted Alex so.
Hesitantly, she reached out an invisible hand, and touched the worn edges of this one. Almost immediately she was pulled in, dumped onto a hard, sandy surface without warning. She felt the air drain from her lungs, her fingers clenching instinctively against the pebbled surface. She struggled to breathe for a moment.
When she managed to sit up, she saw that she was in some sort of desert. The tightly-packed sand beneath her yawned into miles of oblivion, the nothingness coating the world in beige and ruthlessness. She did not see a soul, or any sort of movement, as she stood and gazed out at the empty horizon. It was twilight, and the air was beginning to feel cool.
Something sounded behind her. She turned to find a narrow, trickling stream rise up through the blue-tinged darkness. The water ran like a thin ribbon through the terrain, dipping and rising along the hilly sand. Beside it stood a young boy, no taller than Callie, who, as she watched, sank onto his knees. He was crying.
She walked towards the boy, and sat beside him at the river’s edge. She recognized the youth-stained features of Alex’s face, softer in these early years, more vulnerable than they would ever be in the coming millennia. She knelt beside him and watched as his face contorted into wretched misery, the tears flowing freely down his dirty cheeks. He gasped in deep, helpless sobs, unable to catch his breath.
With a ghostly hand that she knew he could not feel, she reached out and touched his shoulder, the blade of which she now saw bore the small traces of budding wings. His skin was torn open and scabbed in the regions on either side of his spine where grotesque, misshapen feathers were beginning to grow. These lumps were nothing like the massive, beautiful extremities that they would become. The feathers stuck out at awkward angles, and were soaked with blood and puss from the wounds they had grown out of. She winced as she realized just how painful this process must be, and she wondered what he was doing out here all alone.
In the course of a second, her question was answered. From his cow-hide pants, Alex drew a long, narrow stone. She saw that one side of the stone had been sharpened, so that the rock took on the appearance of a make-shift knife. In horror, she watched as the boy closed his eyes, his face resolved, and then lifted the knife to his back.
She could barely look on as he began to drag the sharp edge back and forth across one of the wounds, sawing across the putrid feathers, etching a hole into his flesh. Blood flowed in thick rivulets, forming puddles on the ground behind him, seeping into the river, staining the water red.
The feathers absorbed some of the ruby liquid, becoming tainted with a frightening crimson. Even as the boy cried out in agony, howling into the empty evening, he continued to determinedly saw at his back.
Callie gasped as she felt the world thrust onto its side, and she was torn from the memory with brutal force. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Alex’s furious glower as he pinned her bodily to the ground. She shrank away from him, realizing that he had rolled off of the couch and tackled her to the carpet.
“What are you doing?” he growled.
“I’m….” she began, swallowing. Her heart was beating at a hyper pace, her face flushing with blood. She was scared of the man before her; shocked, really, at how angry he looked. But even as his murderous expression hovered mere inches above her, she knew that he wouldn’t hurt her, and so she closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. When she had gathered her wits somewhat, she opened her eyes again, and replied, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to see that at first. I just wanted to know what you were dreaming about.”
Alex was panting in anger, but after a moment of scowling at her, he rolled off of her and sat with his back braced against the couch. He withdrew into himself, looking down at the carpet, refusing to speak.
She rolled onto her elbows, lying on the plush carpeting, and regarded him with curiosity. Gently, knowing how upset he was, she asked, “Is that how you got that scar?”
He didn’t reply, his huge body trembling with emotion.
“But why?” she whispered, sitting up and hugging her knees. “Why would you try to cut them off?”
He snorted, livid. “Why would I try to do away with the things that made me a freak? You try living in a time when witches and monsters and beasts were all very real to people, and then you tell me why I wouldn’t try to get rid of them.”
“But you’re not a beast,” she said, realizing for the first time that this was true. In the back of her mind, she heard the echoes of what she’d said the first night she was here: What if I just want to get the hell away from you freaks? The memory broke her heart as she looked back on it now, as she realized just how wrong she had been. Moving closer to him, she said, “You’re one of the most generous people I’ve met. You care about people. I have never seen anyone less beastly than you.”
The Guardian (Callista Ryan Series) Page 22